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EUROPE    IN    CONVALESCENCE 


EUROPE  IN 
CONVALESCENCE 


BY 


ALFRED    E.    ZIMMERN 

AUTHOR    OF  "THE    GREEK    COMMONWEALTH,' 
"NATIONALITY    AND   GOVERNMENT,"   ETC. 


Tf* 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON 

Zbc  IRnicfterbocher  {press 
1922 


Copyright,  1922 

by 

Alfred  E.  Zimmern 

Made  in  the  United  States  of  America 


^'t^ 


Dedicated 
TO   ALL  THOSE 

IN  EVERY  COUNTRY  OF   EUROPE 

WHO  HAVE   THE   COURAGE 

TO  LOOK  FORWARD 


i  Q^TTiRyl  ^% 


PREFACE 

TN  letting  this  volume  go  forth  the  scholar  in  me  is 
*  making  a  concession  to  the  citizen.  It  is  not  the 
book  I  planned  to  write;  or,  rather,  to  be  more  pre- 
cise, it  is  not  the  whole  book.  But  the  prospect  that 
the  country  will  be  called  before  long  to  pass  judg- 
ment on  the  policies  of  the  present  administration 
makes  me  feel  that  I  ought  not  to  withhold  such 
contribution  as  I  can  ofifer,  out  of  a  somewhat 
unusual  experience  towards  the  discussion  of 
European  issues. 

My  last  volume  on  this  subject,  a  collection  of 
war-time  essays,  was  published  in  the  summer  of 
1 91 8.  At  that  time  I  believed,  in  common  with  the 
great  bulk  of  my  fellow-countrymen,  that  the 
British  Commonwealth  was  the  political  embodiment 
of  the  most  powerful  idealistic  association ;  the  most 
powerful  influence  for  justice,  honour,  and  public 
right  in  the  world  at  the  present  time;  and  I  gave 
free  and  reasoned  expression  in  my  writings  to  ideals 
for  which  so  many  of  my  own  and  a  younger  genera- 
tion, whose  influence  in  our  public  affairs  we  miss 
more  and  more  as  the  barren  days  go  on,  have  given 

vii 


PREFACE 

their  lives.  I  have  never  stooped  to  propaganda 
or  partisanship ;  nor  is  there  a  word  in  my  previous 
volume  regarding  the  fundamental  idealism  of  the 
British  peoples,  or  the  potentialities  of  the  British 
Commonwealth,  which  I  would  wish  to  retract. 

But  if  the  British  peoples  stand  where  they  did, 
the  same  cannot  be  said  of  their  embodied  authority, 
of  the  Government  which  still  now  in  1922  as  in 
1 91 8,  represents  them — the  peoples  of  the  Dominions 
and  of  India  as  well  as  of  Great  Britian — before  the 
world.  Since  December,  191 8,  when  we  elected  a 
Parliament  pledged  to  violate  a  solemn  agreement 
made  but  five  weeks  earlier,  we  stand  shamed,  dis- 
honoured, and,  above  all,  distrusted  before  man- 
kind ;  and  not  until  we  have  publicly  acknowledged, 
and  made  what  amends  we  yet  can  for  the  wrong 
then  done,  can  the  lips  of  true  lovers  of  Britain  be 
unsealed  again. 

Readers  of  this  volume,  and  of  the  appendices 
attached  to  it,  can  judge  the  issue  for  themselves. 
I  leave  it  to  them  to  decide  how  far  the  General 
Election  of  191 8  was  a  turning  point  in  European 
history,  and  whether  the  odious  wrangling  over  the 
reparation  justly  owing  to  the  civilian  populations 
of  the  invaded  districts,  which  has  confused  and 
disgraced  the  public  life  of  Europe  during  the  last 
three  years,  is  not  due  chiefly  to  the  selfishness  and 
cowardice  of  British  politicians.  Others,  upon  whom 

viii 


PREFACE 

a  forgetful  public  has  become  accustomed  to  unload 
the  blame,  may  share  that  responsibility,  although 
in  lesser  degree;  but  they  had  not  the  same  solemn 
oft-repeated  statements  of  policy,  the  same  declara- 
tions of  altruistic  intention,  to  live  up  to.  The 
magnitude  of  our  lapse,  and  of  our  subsequent 
hypocrisy,  must  be  judged  by  the  magnitude  of  our 
professions. 

I  have  faith  enough  m  my  countrymen  to  believe 
that  when  once  they  truly  understand  the  nature 
of  the  injustice,  and  the  neglect  of  duty,  of  which 
we  have  been  guilty  towards  the  European  peoples 
as  a  whole  and  especially  towards  France  and 
Germany — an  injustice  which  powerful  influences 
in  the  Press  and  elsewhere  have  been  set  in  motion 
to  prevent  them  from  realizing — they  will  not 
hesitate  to  take  the  action  which  the  situation 
demands.  It  is  time  that  Britain  was  once  more 
governed  by  men  whose  word  is  their  bond. 

I  write  this  preface  in  the  United  States,  not  a 
hundred  miles  from  Washington.  When,  at  the 
National  Cemetery  at  Arlington,  I  saw  the  represen- 
tatives of  my  country,  following  the  Commander- 
in-Chief  of  the  Allied  armies,  pay  their  tribute  to 
the  Unknown  Soldier,  I  cherished  the  hope,  which 
was  hardly  an  expectation,  that  Britain  might  take 
up  at  Washington  the  task  she  declined  at  Paris — 
that  of  being  the  skilled  interpreter  for  Europe  to 

ix 


PREFACE 

the  English-speaking  world  overseas.  She  has  not 
played  that  part,  or  even  essayed  to  play  it,  but  has 
preferred,  in  a  Conference  called  primarily  to  con- 
sider extra-European  issues,  to  emphasize  her  extra- 
European  interests  and  affiliations.  I  do  not  criticize 
this  policy,  for  I  appreciate  the  difficulties,  internal 
as  well  as  external,  which  led  to  its  adoption.  I  only 
place  it  on  record,  since  our  European  neighbours 
and  ex-allies  realize  it  more  fully  than  ourselves. 
When  we  rejoice,  as  rejoice  we  can,  over  "English- 
speaking  union,"  let  us  so  frame  our  policy  and 
behaviour  as  to  rule  out  the  odious  imputation  of 
"Anglo-Saxon  domination."  Britain,  by  her  history 
and  situation,  is  both  a  European  and  an  extra- 
European  power;  she  symbolizes  that  world-inter- 
dependence which  Europeans  of  the  last  generation 
and  Americans  of  this  have  been  too  apt  to  ignore. 
If  she  has  helped  at  Washington  to  bring  Asia  closer 
to  America,  she  may  still,  under  wiser  and  more 
trusted  leadership,  return  to  the  role  which  Europe, 
even  now,  expects  from  her — that  of  the  good 
European.  And  for  the  good  European  Europe  is 
more  than  a  market  or  a  field  for  investment  and 
consortiums.  In  caring  for  the  body  of  Europe,  as 
we  must,  let  us  not  forget  her  soul,  nor,  in  running 
after  rapid  expediencies,  ignore  the  influence  upon 
her  of  our  own.  Britain's  first  duty  to  Europe  to- 
day is  to  return  to  her  best  self. 


PREFACE 

During  part  of  the  period  covered  by  events 
described  in  this  volume,  I  held  an  official  position. 
Whilst  I  cannot  divest  myself  of  knowledge  and 
judgments  thus  acquired  nor  alter  the  furniture 
of  my  mind,  I  have  been  scrupulous,  perhaps  over- 
scrupulous, in  making  use  of  no  facts  derived  from 
official  knowledge  which  have  not  found  their  way 
elsewhere  into  print. 

A.  E.  Z. 

Baltimore,  January  8,  1922. 


XI 


CONTENTS 

PART  I 
THE  UPHEAVAL 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I. — The  Political  Upheaval  ...    5 

II. — The  Economic  Upheaval  .    .    .13 

III. — The  Upheaval  of  Ideas   ...   25 

PART  II 
THE  SETTLEMENT 

I. — August,  1914-SEPTEMBER,  1918     .         .       69 

II. — September  29-NovEMBER  11,  1918        .       77 

III. — From  November  ii,  1918,  to  the  Open- 
ing OF  the  Peace  Conference  .      99 

IV. — The  Peace  Conference       .         .         .116 

PART  III 
THE  OUTLOOK 

I. — The  Political  Outlook      .         .         .133 
II. — The  Economic  Outlook       .         .         .     198 

Appendices 221 


xiu 


PART  I 
THE  UPHEAVAL 

Things  are  in  the  saddle  and  ride 
mankind. 


INTRODUCTORY 

OVER  three  years  have  passed  since  the  last  guns 
were  fired  in  the  Great  War.  Four  of  the  five 
Peace  Treaties  which  were  to  be  negotiated  have 
been  signed  and  ratified,  and  are  in  process  of  ex- 
ecution, whilst  the  fifth — that  with  Turkey — is  now 
but  little  concerned  with  European  territories.  The 
psychological  consequences  of  war-strain,  the  hot 
fit  of  nationalism  followed  by  a  cold  fit  of  parochial- 
ism and  indifference,  are  slowly  but  surely  passing 
away,  and  the  economic  reaction,  the  sudden  boom 
followed  as  suddenly  by  a  precipitous  depression  in 
1 919,  has  entered  into  a  chronic  stage.  With  the 
disappearance  of  these  ephemeral  phenomena,  the 
permanent  changes  wrought  during  the  last  seven 
years  in  the  life  of  the  Continent  are  becoming 
more  manifest.  It  is,  therefore,  perhaps  at  last 
possible  to  look  back  in  perspective  at  the  convulsion, 
the  greatest  and  most  sudden  in  her  long  history, 
through  which  Europe  has  passed,  and  to  make  a 
brief  survey  of  her  present  situation  and  outlook. 

It  will  be  simplest  and  clearest  to  begin  our  survey 
from  the  negative  end,  by  pointing  to  the  forces  and 

3 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

influences  which  no  longer,  since  the  events  of  the 
last  years,  fill  their  pre-war  place  in  the  life  of 
Europe.  When  we  have  seen  what  war  has  destroyed 
or  transformed  we  shall  be  better  able  to  estimate 
what  is  likely  to  take  their  place.  War  is  always 
a  great  destroyer,  and  this,  the  greatest  of  all  wars, 
has  been  also  the  greatest  of  destroyers.  If  the  con- 
structive policies  with  which  the  various  belligerents 
entered  the  fray  have  mostly  proved  illusory,  or,  at 
the  best,  premature,  their  destructive  aims  have  in 
great  part  been  fulfilled.  So  far,  at  any  rate,  as 
the  Allies  are  concerned,  what  we  went  to  war 
against  is  irrevocably  overthrown,  but  the  positive 
aims  inscribed  on  our  banners,  and  later  on  those  of 
the  United  States,  seem  as  far  from  realization  as 
ever.  W^e  have  won  the  war  negatively  but  not  posi- 
tively, or,  to  put  it  in  less  strictly  accurate  language, 
we  have  won  the  war,  but  we  have,  so  far,  lost  the 
peace. 

The  war  has  wrought  havoc  in  Europe  in  three 
fields^ — the  political,  the  economic,  and  what  may 
be  called  the  field  of  ideas.  Let  us  take  the  three 
in  order. 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  POLITICAL  UPHEAVAL 

EVER  since  the  formation  of  the  big  territorial 
monarchies  at  the  end  of  the  Middle  Ages  the 
political  destinies  of  Europe  have  been  swayed  bv 
what  have  been  known  as  the  Powers,  sometimes 
ranged  in  opposing  groups  and  maintaining  an 
uneasy  balance  of  forces,  sometimes  acting  together 
in  a  no  less  uneasy  concert.  During  the  half  century 
prior  to  1914  there  were  six  Great  Powers  on  the 
European  stage — Great  Britian,  Germany.  France. 
Russia,  Austria-Hungary,  and  Italy.  Of  these. 
Great  Britain  had  exercised  a  supremacy  at  sea 
unchallenged  since  Trafalgar,  but  she  had  on  the 
whole  held  aloof  from  continental  entanglements, 
and  the  bearing  of  her  naval  supremacy  upon  the 
position  of  the  military  powers  of  the  Continent  in 
the  event  of  w^ar  was  but  little  realized.  Both  the 
German  General  Staff  and  the  traders  and  manu- 
facturers, misled,  the  former  by  the  tradition  of 
Clausewitz,  the  latter  by  the  resuscitated  Cobdenism 

5 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

of  Norman  Angell  and  his  school,  ignored  the  latent 
possibilities    of    a   blockade.      The    soldiers    forgot 
that  to   win  fifty  battles  and   "to  conquer  whole 
kingdoms"  (to  quote  the  words  of  a  German  general 
who  realized  the  truth  too  late)  is  not  necessarily 
to  win  a  war ;  and  the  business  men  failed  to  realize 
that  there  are  stronger  forces,  even  in  the  twentieth 
century  world,  than  self-interest,  and  that  a  nation 
of   shopkeepers  would  not  shrink,  at  the  call   of 
conviction,   from  employing  the  British  Navy  for 
the    systematic    impoverishment    of    Britain's    best 
customers.     Few  continental  statesmen  understood 
either  the  vicissitudes  of  British  policy,  oscillating 
in  normal  times  between  a  "splendid  isolation"  and 
a  spasmodic  and  rather  patronizing  interest  in  the 
welfare  of  the  continental  peoples,  or  the  tenacious, 
unspoken  patriotism  and  the  sure  comprehension  of 
permanent  British  interests  which  always  lay  watch- 
ful   in    the    background.      Thus    Britain's    sudden 
abandonment  of  Denmark  in  the  face  of  Prussia  in 
1864,  her  failure  to  insist  on  the  enforcement  by  the 
Turks  of  the  reform  clauses  of  the  Berlin  Treaty 
of  1878,  and  her  acquiescence  in  the  high-handed 
annexation  of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  by  Austria- 
Hungary  in  1908,  counted  for  more  in  the  Chancel- 
lories of  Europe  than  either  the  warning  voices  of 
British  statesmen   (such  warnings  had  been  heard 
too  often  before)   or  the  strategic  lessons  of  the 

6 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

American  Civil  War,  or  the  writings  of  students 
of  modern  sea-power. 

Of  the  five  remaining  Great  Powers,  Germany, 
the  latest  to  enter  the  circle,  was  beyond  all  question 
the  most  powerful.  Between  1871  and  the  fall  of 
Bismarck  in  1890  she  was  indisputably  the  centre 
of  the  political  system  of  Europe.  She  dominated 
the  Berlin  Congress  of  1878,  she  linked  herself 
shortly  afterwards  in  a  firm  alliance  with  Austria- 
Hungary  and  Italy,  she  was  still  further  safeguarded 
against  Bismarck's  nightmare — a  war  on  two  fronts 
— by  a  secret  treaty  with  Russia,  whilst  her  relations 
with  the  Britain  of  Disraeli,  Salisbury,  and  Queen 
Victoria  were  always  carefully  maintained  on  cordial 
terms.  German  aims  and  the  German  outlook 
during  the  eighties  may  have  been  substantially  the 
same  as  they  were  twenty  and  thirty  years  later, 
but  the  methods  were  different,  and  so  there 
was  no  talk  of  the  "inevitable"  clash  of  ideals. 
Two  nations,  like  two  neighbours,  can  well  live 
peacefully  side  by  side  holding  contrary  opinions. 
It  is  not  a  comfortable  situation;  but  it  is  only 
when  one  of  the  parties  becomes  foolish,  flamboyant, 
or  provocative  that  it  becomes  impossible.  It  was 
from  1890  onwards,  when  the  tiller  of  the  German 
ship  passed  into  clumsier  and  more  restless  hands, 
that  the  supremacy  of  Germany  began  to  be  chal- 
lenged for  fear  of  the  use  she  might  make  of  it. 

7 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

Recent  revelations  have  made  it  clear  that  it  was 
only  after  at  least  two  serious  rebuffs  that  Britain, 
who  had  been  ready  in  1895  and  again  later  to  throw 
her  influence  on  the  side  of  the  Triple  Alliance, 
gravitated  reluctantly  but  inevitably  towards  the 
opposing  Franco-Russian  group.  Those  who  still 
believe  in  the  legend  of  the  "encirclement  of 
Germany"  by  a  jealous  world  and  in  the  sleepless 
malignity  of  King  Edward  towards  his  insufferable 
nephew^  should  study  the  chapter  of  diplomatic 
history  which  opens  with  Lord  Salisbury's  visit  to 
the  Kaiser  at  Cowes  in  1895  to  offer  Germany  a  free 
hand  in  Asiatic  Turkey  and  closes  with  the  Mesopo- 
tamian  and  African  agreements  negotiated  between 
Sir  Edward  Grey  and  Count  Lichnowsky  in  1914, 
but  never  ratified  by  the  latter's  government.* 

But  if,  during  the  reign  of  Wilhelm  IL,  thanks  to 
her  own  shortsightedness  and  incompetence,  and 
her  genius  for  exciting  mistrust,  her  diplomatic 
influence  diminished,  her  trade  and  industry,  her 
navy,  her  mercantile  marine,  and  with  them 
her  population  increased  by  leaps  and  bounds,  whilst 
her  military  system  was  still  regarded  (and,  as  the 
war  showed,  not  without  reason)  as  the  most  perfect 

^  The  British  Foreign  Office  archives  are  still  sealed  on  this 
subject.  An  account  from  the  German  side,  by  the  Swedish 
writer,  Rudolf  Kjellen,  will  be  found  in  vol.  45  (1921),  p.  117 
ff.,  of  Schmoller's  Jahrbuch,  with  bibliography.  It  is  suf- 
ficiently damning. 

8 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

instrument  of  its  kind.  When,  in  1913,  Dr.  Helf- 
ferich,  then  head  of  the  Bank  of  Germany,  later 
Finance  Minister  and  Deputy-Chancellor,  published, 
in  honour  of  the  Kaiser's  Jubilee,  his  book  on  the 
material  progress  of  Germany  during  the  previous 
quarter  of  a  century,  he  was  able  to  show  a  record  of 
almost  uninterrupted  prosperity,  and  to  claim  with 
good  reason  that  German  policy  and  resources  in 
finance,  commerce,  and  manufactures,  as  in  ship- 
building, were  a  power,  ranged  consciously  along- 
side of  the  German  army  and  navy,  for  the 
maintenance  and  extension  of  German  political  in- 
fluence no  longer  in  Europe  only,  but  throughout  the 
world. 

In  other  words,  Germany  in  1914  dominated  the 
political  system  of  the  Continent,  not  only  as  being 
actually  the  strongest  military  and  the  second 
strongest  naval  power,  but  also  because  of  her  visible 
ambitions  and  potentialities.  Her  political  in- 
fluence, as  was  recognized  nowhere  more  clearly  than 
in  Britain,  seemed  destined  inevitably  to  increase, 
for  her  resources,  and  the  use  she  made  of  them, 
were  only  too  obviously  in  harmony  with  the  spirit 
and  tendencies  which  make  for  power  in  the  twen- 
tieth centur}^;  all  that  was  open  to  question  was 
into  which  channels — whether  in  the  Balkans, 
Asia  Minor,  in  North  Africa,  in  the  Far  East,  or 
in  the  tropics — her  untiring  and  supremely  organ- 

9 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

ized  energies  would  be  directed,  and  whether  the  old 
political  system  of  Europe  could  stand  the  strain 
of  such  rapid  and  uncomfortable  growth  by  one  of 
its  members  without  violent  upheaval. 

The  war  has  put  an  end  to  German  political 
supremacy  in  Europe  and  destroyed  the  military 
and  economic  foundations  on  which  it  was  built. 
The  sixty  or  seventy  millions  of  Germans  in  Central 
Europe  will  undoubtedly  again  play  an  important 
part  in  the  political  life  of  the  Continent.  For  the 
moment,  however,  they  are  exhausted  and  bewil- 
dered, bereft  of  the  leadership  and  authority  to 
which  they  are  accustomed,  and  weighed  down  by 
the  economic  burden  imposed  upon  them  by  the 
Peace  Treaty.  The  German  Republic  is  not  yet 
strong  enough,  either  at  home  or  abroad,  to  fill  a 
commanding  place  in  the  political  system  of  Europe. 

If  the  Germany  of  Bismarck  has  disappeared,  the 
Austria-Hungary  of  Metternich  and  Francis  Joseph 
has  passed  even  more  completely  into  history.  In 
the  place  of  a  single  Great  Power  extending  from 
the  Lake  of  Constance  to  the  Iron  Gates  of  the 
Danube,  and  from  Trieste  to  the  Carpathians,  there 
is  a  congeries  of  national  states,  either  newly 
founded,  or  so  much  enlarged  and  transformed  as  to 
be  faced  with  urgent  problems  of  constitution-mak- 
ing and  administrative  reorganization.  What  is  left 
under  the  aegis  of  Vienna  is  but  the  multilated  torso 

lo 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

of  the  old  Habsburg  dominions;  and  even  here  the 
change,  from  monarchy  to  reptibHc,  from  empire  to 
national  state,  from  self-sufficiency  to  indigence,  is 
so  far-reaching  that  the  German-Austrian  is  quite  as 
conscious  as  any  of  his  neighbours  of  living  in  a  new 
and  uncharted  world. 

Even  more  dramatic  has  been  the  collapse  of 
Russia,  and  her  elimination,  not  merely  as  a  Great 
Power,  but  as  a  Power  at  all,  from  the  political 
system  of  Europe.  The  mighty  empire  which  used 
to  play  the  protector  and  pull  the  strings  at  Belgrade, 
Sofia,  and  Cettigne,  the  mother  country  of  the  Slav 
peoples,  lies  at  the  mercy  of  her  former  proteges 
among  whom,  at  Prague,  Belgrade,  and  elsewhere, 
many  of  her  best  are  happy  to  find  a  refuge.  The 
most  that  can  be  hoped  for  Russia  is  that  Western 
capitalism,  whence  alone,  as  it  seems,  her  relief  can 
come,  will  spare  her  the  fate  of  a  Morocco  or 
Mesopotamia,  and  allow  her  gifted  but  ill-starred 
peoples  to  work  out  their  own  destiny  in  relative 
independence. 

Of  the  two  remaining  Great  Powers,  France  has 
borne  the  greatest  burden  and  heat  of  the  conflict, 
and,  in  spite  or  because  of  a  victory  due  in  chief 
measure  to  her  military  effort,  has  not  yet  fully 
regained  the  serenity  or  the  reserve  of  strength 
which  she  needs  in  order  to  devote  herself  to  the 
tasks  which  the  state  of  Europe  imposes  upon  her. 

II 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

Italy,  hitherto  untried  as  a  Great  Power,  has  passed 
through  a  great  ordeal  and  moments  of  supreme 
peril  to  her  morale  and  her  unity.  Abounding  with 
life  and  activity,  she  has  been  quickest  to  resume 
her  normal  existence,  but  neither  her  leaders  nor 
her  people  have  yet  grown  into  the  new  and  more 
responsible  position  opened  out  to  them  by  the  elimi- 
nation of  her  former  associates  in  the  Triple 
Alliance. 

Such  are  the  elements  of  the  former  Concert  of 
Europe  as  the  war  has  left  it.  What  is  there  to 
take  its  place?  How  are  the  collective  problems 
of  Europe  to  be  handled  in  a  world  so  weakened 
and  disorganized?  One  answer  will  leap  to  the 
lips  at  once — the  League  of  Nations.  But  the  discus- 
sion of  this  and  other  constructive  forces  must  be 
left  for  a  later  chapter. 


12 


CHAPTER  II 

THE    ECONOMIC    UPHEAVAL 

'T'HE  economic  history  of  Europe  during  the  cen- 
'-  tury  between  the  close  of  the  Napoleonic  wars 
and  the  British  declaration  of  war  against  Germany 
in  1914  is  a  record  of  continuous  advance.  In  181 5 
the  series  of  inventions  collectively  known  as  the 
industrial  Revolution  had  as  yet  affected  little  more 
than  Great  Britain;  in  the  course  of  the  succeed- 
ing generations  they  gradually  made  their  way 
eastwards,  till  by  the  close  of  our  period  even  Russia 
had  been  drawn  into  the  orbit  of  industrialism, 
and  of  the  ideas  and  doctrines  awakened  by  or  in 
reaction  against  it.  Europe  became  threaded  with 
railways,  telegraphs,  and  telephones;  her  old  centres 
of  traffic  and  population — Paris,  Frankfurt,  Berlin, 
Milan,  Vienna,  Madrid — acquired  new  influence  and 
momentum  as  ganglia  of  a  newly  developed  nervous 
system;  the  Continent  became  linked  together  by 
all  the  international  contrivances  of  nineteenth- 
century  commercialism  and  enterprise,  from  banks 
and  accepting  houses  and  stock  markets  to  sleeping- 

13 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

cars  and  cinema  films ;  whilst,  inside  the  larger  unity, 
the  German  and  Austro-Hungarian  Customs  unions, 
the  political  union  of  Italy,  the  extension  of  the 
Russian  fiscal  system  to  Poland  and  Finland,  and 
the  abolition  of  the  cantonal  customs  in  Switzerland, 
and  of  similar  obstacles  to  free  intercourse  in  other 
states,  created  a  number  of  smaller  but  still  sub- 
stantial economic  units  with  administrative  systems 
which  became  constantly  more  powerful  as  more 
burdens  were  laid  upon  them  by  the  growing  move- 
ment for  state  action  and  social  reform.  By  1914 
Europe  as  a  whole  was  opened  up  to  the  influences 
of  modern  industrialism,  and  her  life,  and  that  of 
her  separate  states,  in  increasing  measure  from  west 
to  east,  was  organized  on  the  basis  of  the  inter- 
national division  of  labour.  In  other  words,  she 
had  ceased,  throughout  the  whole  of  her  area,  to 
be  self-contained  and  self-sufficient,  and  had  become 
a  member — the  most  important  and  central  member 
— of  an  economic  system  world-wide  in  its  organiza- 
tion and  connections.  Able  to  draw  on  the  raw 
materials  of  the  overseas  world  for  her  manu- 
factures, she  was  steadily  increasing  both  in  pros- 
perity and  population,  and,  in  proportion  as  each 
of  her  communities  became  industrialized,  its  flow 
of  emigration  diminished  and  its  sons  were  able  to 
earn  their  livelihood  out  of  its  developing  trade  and 
manufactures.      Well    before    1914,    for    instance, 

14 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

Germany  (so  often  wrongly  described  as  burdened 
with  a  surplus  population)  was  receiving  more  im- 
migrants than  she  sent  out  emigrants,  and  of  her 
seventy  million  inhabitants  some  eighteen  million 
were  directly  or  indirectly  dependent  for  their  liveli- 
hood upon  her  overseas  commerce.  Mr.  Hoover, 
looking  at  the  Continent  as  a  whole,  with  the  wide- 
ranging  eye  of  an  American  accustomed  to  the 
broad,  unimpeded  spaces  of  the  United  States,  has 
estimated  that,  as  a  result  of  this  process  of  in- 
dustrialization and  consequent  dependence  upon 
oversea  connections,  there  were  in  war-time  Europe 
of  1918,  a  hundred  million  more  persons  than  the 
Continent  could  support  out  of  its  own  natural 
resources. 

Such  was  the  system  under  which  men  earned 
their  bread  in  Europe  when  the  leading  sea-power 
declared  war  against  the  leading  land-power,  and 
cut  the  greater  part  of  Europe  off  from  the  world. 
The  result,  after  four  and  a  half  years  of  imprison- 
ment and  isolation,  was  an  economic  transfonnation 
even  more  drastic  and  far-reaching  than  the  political 
changes  by  which  it  was  accompanied.  If  the 
strategic  history  of  the  war  is  ever  written  under 
its  true  name  it  will  be  entitled  The  Siege  of  Europe. 
The  blockade  was  indeed  the  decisive  instrument  of 
Allied  power,  and  it  has  altered  the  economic  life  of 
Europe  beyond  recognition. 

15 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

Walther    Rathenau,    lately    Minister    of    Recon- 
struction in  the  German  Government,  one  of  the 
ablest  all-round  minds  in  that  land  of  specialists,  has 
described  in  an  interesting  pamphlet  the  effect  pro- 
duced upon  him  ])y  the  news  of  the  British  declara- 
tion of  war.    He  realized  in  a  flash  that,  in  default 
of  a  rapid  victory,  such  as  he,  unlike  most  Germans, 
did  not  count  upon,  it  meant  the  drying  up  of  the 
major  sources  of  his  country's  prosperity,  and,  even 
more  than  that,  a  deficiency  in  the  raw  materials  and 
foodstuffs  essential  to  the  carrying  on  of  war  and 
to  the  maintenance  of  a  civilized  standard  of  life. 
No  civilized  country,  still  less  an  industrial  country, 
can  live  without  cotton  and  wool  for  her  clothing, 
hides  for  her  boots,  rubber  and  oil  for  her  transport, 
jute  to  make  sacks  for  her  heavy  goods,  phosphate 
and  nitrates  to  manure  her  fields,  palm-oil  for  soap, 
and  the  numberless  other  natural  products  and  com- 
modities which  Germany  and  every  European  coun- 
try had  become  accustomed  to   draw   from  over- 
seas.   He  carried  his  misgivings  to  the  War  Office, 
where,  thanks  to  the  prestige  of  German  militarism 
in  attracting  good  brains  to  its  service,  they  were 
not  only  listened  to  patiently,  but  acted  on  with  ex- 
emplary  promptitude.      Within   less   than   a   week 
Rathenau  had  been  installed  as  head  of  the  Raw 
Materials  Department  of  the  German  War  Office, 
and  was  engaged  in  buying  up  such  stores  of  the 

l6 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

necessary  materials  as  he  could  lay  hands  on  in  the 
adjoining  neutral  countries,  against  whom  Britain 
had  not  yet  perfected  her  machinery  of  blockade. 
Rathenau's  initiative  averted  an  immediate  crisis, 
but  neither  he  nor  his  ingenious  colleague,  Helfiferich, 
deviser  of  the  commercial  submarine,  could  alter  the 
fundamental  facts  of  the  situation.  Marshal  Foch 
led  the  Allied  troops  to  victory  on  the  Western 
Front  but  it  v^^as  the  deficiency  of  cotton  and  wool, 
of  jute  and  hides  and  fats,  which  accelerated  the  de- 
cline and  eventually  administered  the  coup  de  grace- 
behind  the  enemy's  ranks.  Allied  statesmen  and  sol- 
diers who,  even  after  the  Bulgarian  armistice,  ex- 
pected the  German  army  to  go  on  fighting  through 
the  winter  in  the  mud  of  Flanders,  might  have 
stopped  to  ask  themselves  whether  they  would  have 
the  boots  to  fight  in.  Let  it  be  mentioned  in  passing 
as  a  curious  fact,  and  an  example  of  the  blunders 
from  which  not  even  the  most  perfect  organization 
can  preserve  a  government  of  specialists  working  in 
water-tight  compartments,  that,  whilst  the  military 
and  financial  arrangements  in  the  event  of  war  had 
been  thought  out  to  the  last  detail,  its  industrial 
reactions  had  been  completely  lost  sight  of,  and  that 
by  a  culminating  irony,  the  organization  which,  in 
one  department,  had  pigeon-holed  its  scheme  for  the 
invasion  of  Belgium  in  defiance  of  a  solemn  inter- 
national engagement,  was,  in  another  department, 

2  17 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

relying  upon  British  sea-power  to  adhere  to  the  strict 
letter  of  an  international  agreement,  not  even  ratified 
by  its  Government,  in  its  action  towards  the  com- 
merce of  the  adjoining  neutrals.  "You  will  always 
be  fools  and  we  shall  never  be  gentlemen,"  seems  to 
have  been  an  unquestioned  assumption  of  the  policy 
of  the  Kaiser's  Government  towards  Britain. 

The  economic  history  of  the  war-years  is  the 
record  of  a  society,  hitherto  united  in  a  single  world- 
wide system  of  intercourse,  suddenly  divided  into 
two.  On  the  one  side  there  is  Britain  and  the  over- 
seas world,  together  with  France,  Italy,  Holland, 
Spain  and  Portugal,  Greece,  Scandinavia,  and 
Switzerland ;  on  the  other  there  is  the  vast  blockaded 
area  extending  in  Bethmann-Hollweg's  words, 
"from  Arras  to  Mesopotamia."  For  four  and  a  half 
years  these  two  worlds  existed  side  by  side,  touching 
one  another  only  at  the  trenches  or  through  the  care- 
fully regulated  relations  of  neutrals,  each  concentrat- 
ing its  whole  strength  upon  the  single  purpose  of 
overthrowing  the  opposing  organization,  so  lately  a 
part  of  its  own.  Viewed  from  the  economic  stand- 
point, the  struggle  was  a  civil  war  within  what  Gra- 
ham Wallas  has  taught  us  to  call  "the  Great  Society." 

The  attempts  made,  with  increasing  success  as 
the  struggle  went  on,  to  organize  each  of  the  new 
systems  for  its  purpose,  embody  the  most  interesting 
experiments  ever  made  in  the  collective  control  and 

i8 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

distribution  of  the  world's  resources,  and  it  is  to  be 
hoped  that  the  authorities  of  the  Carnegie  Endow- 
ment, who  have  undertaken  to  record  them,  will 
succeed  in  their  task  before  the  details  have  escaped 
the  minds  of  the  responsible  officials.^ 

So  far  as  the  Allies  are  concerned,  the  organiza- 
tion was  throughout  a  co-operation  of  independent 
Governments,  and,  though  it  had  reached,  by  the 
autumn  of  191 8,  a  high  degree  of  central  control, 
especially  in  regard  to  shipping  and  the  sea-borne 
commodities  for  which  the  Allied  Maritime  Trans- 
port Council  was  responsible,  it  always  retained  a 
large  measure  of  elasticity.  There  was  no  great 
difficulty,  therefore,  though  there  was  great  un- 
wisdom, in  its  disbandment  in  the  winter  of 
1918-1919. 

It  was  otherwise  in  the  blockaded  area.  Here, 
authority,  originally  divided  between  five  nominally 
independent  Governments  (for  Austria  and  Hun- 
gary counted  for  civil  purposes  as  two)  became  in- 
creasingly concentrated  in  the  hands  of  the  German 
General  Stafif  until,  by  the  latter  part  of  191 8, 
Ludendorfif,  the  right-hand  and  controlling  brain 
of  the  Commander-in-Chief,  was  exercising  over  an 
empire,  larger  than  that  of  Napoleon  at  the  height  of 
his  power,  a  detailed  control  such  as  only  a  com- 

'  One  of  these,  Mr.  J.  A.  Salter,  has  lately  written  the  story 
of  the  Allied  Shipping  Control  (Oxford,  1921). 

19 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

bination  of  irresistible  military  force  with  perfected 
modern  means  of  transport  and  communication 
could  have  rendered  possible.  There  is  a  fascinating 
book  to  be  written  by  a  student  of  administration  on 
the  incessant  conflicts  between  the  German  soldiers 
and  their  civilian  colleagues  in  the  five  countries  and 
the  invaded  regions  respectively  assigned  to  them, 
ranging  over  the  whole  field  of  affairs,  from  military 
and  naval  strategy  in  their  bearings  upon  foreign 
policy  and  public  opinion  at  home  and  abroad  to 
transport  food  supply,  finance,  the  conscription  of 
labour,  and,  finally,  the  statement  of  w^ar  aims,  and 
the  moment  and  method  of  negotiations,  Helfferich, 
Czernin,  and  others  have  lifted  here  and  there  a 
corner  of  the  curtain — enough  to  reveal  to  us  that 
the  economic  organization  of  the  blockaded  area  was 
not  only  militarist  in  spirit,  as  it  was  bound  to  be,  but 
often  planned  by  the  military  authorities  themselves. 
Let  us  look  for  a  moment  at  what  this  task  of 
organization  involved.  We  can  leave  aside  for  this 
purpose  the  allies  or  dependents  of  Germany,  who, 
being,  except  in  Bohemia,  less  industrialized  in  their 
development,  had  not  to  meet  the  problem  in  its 
full  vigour,  and  confine  ourselves  to  the  predominant 
partner.  Cut  ofif  as  she  was  from  access  to  some 
of  her  most  essential  raw  materials  and  food-stuffs, 
she  required  to  readjust  her  whole  economic  life  on 
a  basis  of  self-sufficiency.     This  involved  a  process 

20 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

of  overhauling,  of  economization,  of  the  adaptation 
of  old  agencies  and  instruments  to  new  ends  which 
could  not  but  be  ruthless  to  innumerable  private  in- 
terests. Where  the  English,  inveterate  individualists 
even  when  their  national  destiny  was  shivering  in  the 
balances,  granted  exemption  from  service  to  the 
owners  of  "one-man  businesses,"  the  Germans 
surveyed  their  trades  and  industries  wholesale,  and 
put  the  smaller  and  less  efficient  undertakings  out  of 
business.  Supplies  of  every  kind,  if  deemed  of  suf- 
ficient importance,  were  commandeered,  placed 
under  control,  subjected  to  maximum  pricing,  and 
often  rationed.  Factories  and  workshops  were 
directed  by  administrative  order  from  one  branch  of 
production  to  another,  and  whole  new  industries 
such  as  the  winning  of  nitrate  from  the  air,  the 
manufacture  of  poison  gas,  and  the  making  of  in- 
numerable substitutes,  from  acorn  coffee  to  paper 
shirts,  were  brought  into  existence  with  the  aid  of 
public  money.  Finally,  labour  was  deprived  of 
freedom  of  contract,  and  workmen  and  workwomen 
were  assigned  by  the  State  authority  to  the  particular 
niche  where  they  were  deemed  most  useful.  The 
great  industrial  interests,  always  closely  linked  with 
the  German  State,  co-operated  with  the  bureaucracy 
in  effecting  this  transformation.  A  vast  new  system 
of  State-controlled  capitalist  production  was  thus 
brought  into  being,  and  from  191 6  onwards,  plans 

21 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

were  being  worked  out  by  experts  on  behalf  of  the 
two  parties  for  its  conversion  to  peace  purposes  after 
the  close  of  hostilities.  The  course  of  the  war  had 
brought  home  to  the  Prussian  mind  the  importance 
of  maintaining  an  Economic,  as  well  as  a  military 
and  financial,  General  Staff,  and  the  books  of  Nau- 
mann  and  Rathenau,  with  their  characteristic  Ger- 
man blending  of  romanticism  and  rigidity,  idealism 
and  organization,  are  eloquent  of  the  direction  in 
which  the  governing  minds  of  Germany  were 
turning. 

But  all  these  projects — indeed,  all  possibility  of 
emerging  from  the  abnormal  conditions  of  the 
blockade  without  widespread  confusion  and  anarchy 
— depended  upon  access  to  an  adequate  supply  of 
industrial  raw  materials.  For  all  the  time  the 
Germany  of  Ludendorff  and  Helfferich  was  perfect- 
ing her  war  organization  her  supplies  were  steadily 
running  out,  and  with  them  the  financial  resources 
and  the  credit-power  needed  for  replenishing  them 
from  their  oversea  sources.  Hence  in  November, 
1918,  the  master  problem  for  Germany,  and  for  all 
the  industrial  regions  of  the  blockaded  area,  from 
Northern  France  and  Belgium  to  Bohemia,  Lower 
Austria,  and  Poland,  was  that  of  securing  industrial 
raw  materials.  This  was  far  more  important  than 
the  problem  of  food-supply,  for  food  is  of  little  use 
to  working-class  populations  unless  they  have  the 

22 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

money  to  buy  it  with;  moreover,  by  ceasing  hostili- 
ties in  the  early  winter  the  German  authorities 
provided  a  margin  of  time,  available  for  the  import 
of  industrial  raw  materials,  before  the  supplies  of 
the  previous  harvest  were  exhausted.  They  had 
even  more  time  in  hand  in  October,  1918,  than  they 
reckoned  to  have  when  they  offered  peace  in  the 
December  of  191 6.  Peace,  they  knew,  involved 
the  demobilization  of  millions  of  men.  These  men 
needed  immediate  employment,  if  confusion,  and 
worse  than  confusion,  were  to  be  avoided.  Employ- 
ment involved  raw  materials.  Raw  materials,  then, 
were  the  pivot  of  the  European  situation.  If  the 
transformation  from  war  to  peace  conditions  was  to 
be  effected  peacefully  in  face  of  the  menaces  of 
Moscow,  and  of  the  lightheadedness  which  was 
bound  to  follow  the  sudden  cessation  of  the  war- 
strain  after  years  of  effort  and  underfeeding,  if 
chimneys  were  to  begin  smoking  again  in  the  block- 
aded area,  from  Lille  to  Lodz,  and  from  Brussels  to 
the  industrial  suburbs  of  Buda-Pesth,  there  must  be  a 
concerted  European  policy  for  getting  the  Continent 
back  to  work.  Once  the  materials  were  provided 
there  would  be  no  difficulty  in  selling  them,  for 
employment  sets  money  in  circulation,  and  every 
house-wife  in  the  blockaded  area  and  most  in  the 
submarine-menaced  countries,  had  her  list  of  neces- 
sary purchases. 

23 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

Such  was  the  problem  presented  in  November, 
1918,  to  the  Allied  statesmen  who  through  their 
perfected  system  of  inter-allied  organization,  held 
the  greater  part  of  the  shipping,  the  raw  materials, 
the  foodstuffs,  and  the  credit-power  of  the  world, 
either  jointly  or  individually,  in  their  grasp.  How 
did  they  proceed  to  handle  it?  The  answer  must 
be  left  for  a  later  chapter. 


24 


CHAPTER  III 

THE    UPHEAVAL    OF    IDEAS 

'  I  'riE  world  of  ideas  in  which  men's  minds  were 
'•  moving  in  1914  was  in  close  relation  with  the 
external  order  of  European  life  and  society.  The 
nineteenth  century,  and  more  especially  the  latter 
half  of  it,  had  placed  its  chief  effort  and  aspiration 
in  the  tasks  of  material  development.  Society  in 
other  ages  had  paid  respect  to  the  thinker  and  the 
artist,  even  to  the  saint.  The  men  whom  pre-war 
society  chiefly  delighted  to  honour  were  those  en- 
dowed with  the  particular  combination  of  will- 
power, technical  knowledge,  and  quickness  of 
insight  and  decision,  which  constitutes  the  make- 
up of  a  successful  organizer  of  men  and  machines. 
Not  the  lonely  inventors  whose  ideas,  once  set  in 
motion,  have  changed  the  outward  aspect  of  our 
civilization,  but  the  bustling  promoters  and 
advertisers  who  were  able  to  act  as  their  sponsors 
in  the  market-place,  won  the  recognition  and  the 
rewards  which  every  community  reserves  for  those 

25 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

who  come  nearest  to  the  unspoken  ideal  of  its 
members.  Life  had  become  more  comfortable  than 
ever  before  in  human  history — a  material  paradise 
for  the  rich,  and  if  not  a  gilded,  at  least  an  insured 
and  cushioned  cage  for  the  less  fortunate  classes. 
And  every  increase  in  the  material  well-being, 
every  rise  in  the  trade  returns,  savings-bank  de- 
posits, and  other  statistical  evidences  of  the 
prosperity  which  men  mistook  for  happiness,  stimu- 
lated the  appetite  for  more  of  the  same  feeding. 
It  is  the  characteristic  of  money,  as  the  Greeks 
remarked  long  ago,  that  it  is  infinite,  that  there  is 
no  limit  to  the  amount  of  it  that  can  either  be 
possessed  or  desired.  A  society,  which  had  made 
money  its  god  and  had  elevated  its  conception  of 
the  indispensables  to  happiness  to  the  motor-car 
standard,  had  set  itself  to  the  task  of  compassing 
the  infinite.  The  result,  despite  the  solid  outward 
evidence  of  successful  achievement,  was  a  deep  and 
ever-growing  dissatisfaction,  a  lingering  malaise 
and  restlessness,  the  full  extent  of  which  was  only 
revealed  when  the  war  swept  the  old  society,  and 
its  gods  and  sanctions,  into  the  abyss  of  the  past 

A.     Political  Doctrines 

This    material    ideal,    if    ideal    it   can   be    called, 
dominated  both  the  political  parties  and  the  other 

26 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

organized  intellectual  influences  of  pre-war  Europe. 
The  party  system  exhibited  characteristic  varieties 
and  complications  in  the  different  countries,  but, 
broadly  speaking,  the  political  life  of  the  European 
peoples  found  its  expression  in  three  groups — the 
Conservatives  (amongst  v^hom  must  be  included 
the  clericals),  the  Liberals,  and  the  Socialists. 

Conservatism,  strongest  in  Spain  and  Russia  but 
powerful  also  in  Britain,  France,  and  Germany,  was 
the  stronghold  of  those  who  cared  for  authority, 
for  stability,  for  the  comfortable  regime  of  use  and 
wont.  Its  traditions  reached  back  to  the  counter- 
revolutionary movement  of  the  beginning  and 
middle  of  the  century,  to  1789,  181 5,  and  1848; 
but  the  vital  meaning  of  those  conflicts,  which  had 
been  so  real  to  Burke  and  le  Maistre,  to  Metternich 
and  Wellington,  and  later  to  Bismarck  and  the 
anti-Republicans  of  his  generation,  had  become 
obliterated  with  the  passage  of  time  and  the  decline 
or  debasement  of  the  old  revolutionary  issues.  With 
the  withering  of  its  intellectual  tradition.  Conser- 
vatism had  relapsed  more  and  more  into  an  attitude 
of  obstinate  and  unthinking  defence;  and  if  it  be 
asked  what  it  was  that  the  French  bourgeois  and 
the  German  Junker,  the  Spanish  clerical,  the  English 
Tory  and  the  Russian  bureaucrat  were  united  in 
defending,  the  answer  is  more  easily  given  in 
concrete  than  in  abstract  terms.    Not  "the  principles 

27 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

of  the  Revolution,"  nor  "Church  and  State,"  nor 
"Kaiser  and  Fatherland,"  still  less,  as  is  sometimes 
impertinently  claimed  in  Spain,  the  social  principles 
of  the  Christian  Church  and  Gospel,  formed  the 
inspiration  of  those  who  in  each  country  set  them- 
selves to  oppose  ideas  of  political  and  social  change. 
To  be  defenders  of  the  established  order  meant, 
in  1 914,  in  Republican  France  as  in  monarchical 
Spain  and  democratic  England,  to  be  defenders  of 
Property. 

Liberalism  had  an  adventurous  and  inspiring 
ancestry  to  boast  of,  but  by  1914  its  laurels  had 
faded,  and  its  prestige  was  everywhere  on  the 
wane.  Originating  in  seventeenth-century  England 
and  eighteenth-century  France  as  the  exponent  of 
what  English  writers  called  British  liberty,  and 
their  French  colleagues,  as  characteristically,  the 
Rights  of  Man,  it  had  developed  during  the  wars 
of  the  Revolution  into  a  movement  for  the  liber- 
ation and  the  political  independence  of  nations.  In 
the  writings  of  its  greatest  nineteenth-century 
prophet,  Mazzini,  the  two  strains,  the  individual  and 
the  national,  are  inextricably  blended,  running  to- 
gether with  a  warm  current  of  social  idealism.  His 
watchword,  ''God  and  the  People/'  sums  up  a  whole 
world  of  aspiration,  and  conceals  the  inner  conflict 
which  was  bound  to  arise  when,  to  use  a  modern 
phrase,   individual  and   national   self-determination 

28 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

pointed  in  different  directions,  or  when  the  people 
became  more  interested  in  the  social  than   in  the 
nationalist    aspects    of    Mazzini's    appeal.      These 
divergent  and  often  contradictory  elements  in  the 
Liberal  creed  became  more  manifest  as  the  century 
developed.     When   Bismarck  established   a  United 
German  Empire  by  his  sovereign  recipe  of  blood 
and    iron,     and    when    Slav,     Greek,     and    Rou- 
manian, Japanese  and  Indian  enthusiasts  began  to 
apply  the  nationalist  ideas  of  Western  Europe  to 
their  own  problems  and  conditions,  the  humanitarian 
elements  in  Mazzini's  composite  gospel  often  seemed 
far  to  seek.     During  the  generation  prior  to  the 
war    Liberal    nationalism    had    ceased,    except    in 
Ireland,    to   be   a    powerful    influence    in    Western 
Europe,  but  it  was  gathering  strength,  visibly  and 
beneath  the  surface,  not  only  in  south-eastern  and 
north-eastern    Europe,     from    the    Baltic    to    the 
Adriatic  and  the  Black  Sea,  but  among  ardent  and 
susceptible  minds  throughout  Asia  and  Africa.     But 
the  nationalism  of  such  agitations  was  often  more 
apparent  than  their  Liberalism,  and,  though  it  is 
impossible  to  deny  a  Liberal  character  to  a  move- 
ment which  can  point  to  such  figures  as  Masaryk, 
Venizelos,    and    Gandhi    among    its    leaders,    they 
would  be  the  last  to  deny  that  they  had  had  a  hard 
struggle  to  wage  against  the  baser  spirits  who  are 
ever  on  the  watch  to  vulgarize  nationalism  into  an 

29 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

arrogant    and    intolerant    manifestation    of    mere 
herti-gregariousness. 

After  the  union  of  Germany  and  of  Italy.  Liber- 
alism in  Western  Europe  was  weakened  by  the 
disillusioning  realization  of  part  of  its  nationalist 
programme,  while  the  war  of  1870,  followed,  con- 
trary to  Bismarck's  better  judgment,  by  the 
annexation  of  Alsace-Lorraine,  contributed  still 
further  to  its  eclipse.  Prussia  bestrode  the  Con- 
tinent, and  whilst  Bismarck,  strong  in  the  argument 
of  the  fait  accompli,  was  winning  over  his  old  Liberal 
opponents  to  the  twin  causes  of  absolutism  and 
industrial  efficiency,  Liberals  in  other  countries  lost 
enthusiasm  and  incentive,  conscious  of  a  dead 
weight  of  reaction  in  the  centre  of  the  Continent 
which  the  mere  force  of  ideas  was  powerless  to 
dislodge.  Bismarck's  abandonment  of  Free  Trade 
in  1879  marks  the  beginning  of  a  rapid  ebb  in  the 
fortunes  of  the  Manchester  School,  a  characteristi- 
cally English  combination  of  internationalism  and 
good  business  which,  thanks  to  the  initiative  of 
Napoleon  III.,  had  become  the  fashion  in  the 
Chancellories  of  Europe  during  the  third  quarter 
of  the  century.  In  the  period  between  the  Franco- 
German  war  and  1914,  Liberalism,  as  an  influence 
upon  foreign  policy,  upon  the  mutual  relations  of 
the  European  peoples,  was  thus  driven  more  and 
more     underground.        Its     vague     humanitarian 

30 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

formulae  were  indeed  too  familiar  and  too  non- 
committal to  be  discarded  by  the  rulers  of  Europe, 
nor  had  any  others  equally  safe  and  convenient  yet 
been  devised  to  take  their  place.  But  the  peace  and 
goodwill  promoted  by  Bismarck  on  behalf  of  a 
"satiated"  Germany  were  very  different  in  spirit 
from  the  watchwords  of  the  promoters  of  the  Great 
Exhibition  of  185 1,  and  the  international  brother- 
hood of  peoples  preached  by  Nicholas  II.,  when  he 
summoned  the  first  Hague  Conference,  was  some- 
thing far  removed  from  the  faith  of  Mazzini  or  the 
French  Liberals  of  '48.  It  was  in  the  lands  whither 
the  strong  arm  of  Potsdam  could  not  penetrate, 
behind  the  bulwark  of  British  sea-power,  that  the 
internationalist  doctrines  of  Liberalism,  with  their 
vision  of  a  world  of  free  peoples  bound  together 
to  keep  humanity  at  peace,  were  now  most  sincerely 
professed — shyly  and  by  small  semi-religious  coteries 
in  Britain,  more  exuberantly  and  unquestionably 
in  the  United  States.  Thus  it  was  that  Liberalism, 
far  from  the  haunts  of  military  power  and  from 
the  realities  emphasized  by  its  rule,  shed  much  of 
its  European  experience,  and  assumed  an  abstract 
and  too  exclusively  Anglo-Saxon  character;  and 
it  was  in  this  guise  that  it  emerged  once  more 
during  the  war,  in  the  careful  formulations  of 
Asquith  and  the  bold  and  sonorous  preachments  of 
Woodrow  Wilson,  to  exercise,  for  a  few  brief  and 

31 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

dazzling  months,  a  predominant  influence  over  the 
public  opinion  of  Europe. 

Meanwhile     in    the    domestic    sphere,     Liberals 
found    the    simple    and    harmonious    solutions    of 
Mazzini,  and  of  mid-century  Christian  idealists  in 
Britain  and  elsewhere,  no  easier  of  application.     In 
the   increasing  complexity   and   dehumanization  of 
the  industrial  system,  with  the  growth  of  joint  stock 
companies  and  impersonal  controls,  fraternity  and 
co-operation,  and  even  liberty  and  equality,  supplied 
little  positive  guidance.     Unable  or  unwilling  to  dig 
deeper,  to  re-analyse  the  nature  of  modern  man, 
and  to  assess,  in  terms  of  quality  rather  than  of 
quantity,    the   values   of    modern   civilization,   and 
faced  with  the  crude  and  garish  competition  of  the 
Socialist  gospel,  Liberalism  surrendered  its  integrity 
and  took  refuge  in  compromise.     Thus  it  survived, 
both  in  Britain  and  on  the  Continent,  not  as  the 
pioneer  of  a  new  world  of  personal  freedom  and 
social    justice,    but   as    a   party   of    moderate   and 
ameliorating  reform.     There,  too,  the  great  tradi- 
tional watchwords  survived,  especially  in  perorations 
and  in  election  programmes,  but,  to  use  a  famous 
phrase    of    Gladstone's,    they  were    "tempered    by 
prudence,"  and  also,  let  it  be  added,  by  a  regard 
for   economy   characteristic   of    what   was   always, 
even   at   its   zenith,   a   bourgeois   party.      Common 
sense  and  evolution,  two  idols  of  a  "practical"  age, 

32 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

took  their  place  beside  the  older  and  more  exalted 
declarations  of  policy;  for  a  society  in  which  men 
surrendered  themselves  freely  to  the  velocity  of 
machines  had  become  increasingly  terrified  of  the 
swift  and  sweeping  initiatives  of  the  human  mind. 
Social  progress,  young  Liberals  were  told,  must 
come  slowly  and  by  instalments,  by  the  same  grad- 
ual, and  indeed  imperceptible,  stages  as  marked  the 
advance  of  modern  London  upon  ancient  Athens, 
and  of  a  mammoth  American  factory  upon  the 
workshop  of  a  Phidias  and  a  Fra  Angelico.  Prog- 
ress, so  interpreted,  is  the  creed  of  a  middle-aged 
and  disillusioned  movement.  Small  wonder  that  by 
1 9 14  youth  and  enthusiasm  were  being  attracted  to 
other  and  ruddier  banners. 

Socialism,  the  political  doctrine,  or  rather  the 
religion,  professed  by  the  vast  majority  of  the 
industrial  working  class  of  Europe  in  19 14,  is  a 
characteristic  product  of  the  system  which  it  is 
designed  to  overturn  or  to  transform.  Its  latest 
historian  has  indeed  industriously  laid  bare  the  in- 
tellectual origins  of  its  leading  ideas,  tracing  some 
of  them  back  to  eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth- 
century  England  and  France,  and  others,  with 
characteristic  German  conscientiousness,  to  the 
Middle  Ages  and  behind  them;  and  it  is  true  that 
the  movement  had  a  brief  vogue  in  England  before 
it  became  solidified  in  Germany,  and  that  there  is 
3  33 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

the  closest  resemblance,  even  to  the  metaphors  and 
the  phraseology,  between  the  infant  Socialism  of  the 
Poor  Man's  Gimrdian  in  the  early  eighteen-thirties, 
and  the  diluted  Bolshevism  of  the  Daily  Herald 
in  1922.  But  it  was  in  the  Western  Europe  of  the 
forties,  when  the  factory  system  in  England  was 
working  up  to  the  climax  which  excited  the  denunci- 
ations of  Lord  Shaftesbury,  and  when  France  under 
Louis  Philippe  was  adding  a  new  and  sinister 
connotation  to  the  term  bourgeois,  that  Karl  Marx, 
an  uprooted  Jew  from  the  Rhine  country,  who, 
after  brief  spells  in  Paris  and  Brussels,  spent  most 
of  his  life  in  London  and  most  of  his  working  days 
in  the  Library  of  the  British  Museum,  crystallized 
what  had  hitherto  been  a  vague  and  formless  con- 
glomerate of  theories  and  discontents  into  a 
systematic  and  imposing  structure  of  ideas  and 
propaganda.  Marx  surveyed  the  world  of  nine- 
teenth-century industrialism  and  saw  that  it  was 
bad.  His  diagnosis  of  the  maladies  of  society  was 
as  scientific  and  as  accurate  as  any  hitherto  under- 
taken, and  his  indictment  of  our  so-called  civilization 
was,  and  remains,  unanswerable.  Regarded  simply 
as  a  rebel,  as  a  prophet  of  industrial  protestantism, 
he  is  immune  from  criticism,  except  the  one 
reminder  that,  in  a  world  in  which  the  classes,  like 
the  peoples,  have  of  necessity  to  live  together, 
protestantism,     like    patriotism,     is     not     enough. 

34 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

Where  he  failed  in  insight  was  in  believing  that  he 
could  bring  about  a  better  world  by  transforming  the 
organization  of  society  without  transforming  its 
values.  Thus  he  became  the  adored  chief  of  a 
movement,  indeed  of  a  Church,  which,  just  because 
its  doctrine  of  the  age-long  struggle  between  the 
master-class  and  the  proletarian,  with  the  inevitable 
and  nearly-impending  victory  of  the  latter  in  a 
glorious  revolution,  pointed  to  everyday  facts  and 
appealed  to  elemental  passions  and  desires,  needed 
only  to  perfect  its  propaganda,  and  to  apply  the 
right  tinge  of  red  in  the  right  place  for  each  trade 
and  locality,  to  attract  multitudes  to  its  banner.  For 
to  the  victims  of  modern  industrialism,  in  the 
monotonous  and  mechanical  routine  of  their  daily 
existence,  its  message  of  upheaval  corresponded  to 
an  inner  craving  for  free  initiative  and  activity. 

Socialism  has  made  its  way  in  modem  society 
much  after  the  same  fashion  as  Christianity  made 
its  way  in  the  Roman  Empire.  Its  message  has 
appealed  to  the  same  section — the  more  restless  and 
aspiring  members  of  what  were  considered  the 
inferior  classes — and  it  has  brought  the  same  good 
tidings  of  a  better  time  to  come.  As  has  been  well 
said  by  an  acute  modern  Jewish  critic.  Socialism 
is  indeed  little  more  than  a  pocket  edition  of  the 
old  Jewish  Messianic  idea,  or,  it  may  be  added,  in 
its  latest  East  European  form,  of  the  fervours  and 

35 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

furies  of  Islam.  So  it  is  piquant  to  observe  how 
it  has  suffered,  and  is  now  suffering  more  than 
ever,  from  a  disappointment,  and  an  intellectual 
embarrassment  very  similar  to  that  which  con- 
fronted the  first  generation  of  Christian  converts 
as  the  date  of  the  Second  Coming  seemed  to  be 
receding  year  by  year.  The  modern  Socialist  is 
indeed  in  a  far  more  difficult  situation  than  his 
predecessors;  for,  whereas  they  could  do  no  more 
than  sit  still  and  wait  on  the  event,  the  duty  of  the 
modern  apostle,  who  has  pitched  his  promised 
denouement  in  the  midst  of  this  world's  affairs,  is 
to  labour  to  bring  the  transformation  about;  and 
this  involves  the  creation  and  maintenance  of  a  vast 
and  necessarily  material  organization,  which  re- 
quires to  be  kept  at  a  religious  level  of  faith, 
enthusiasm,  and  expectation  by  a  constant  reitera- 
tion or  variation  of  the  Messianic  promise  of  a  new 
world.  For  those  who  are  old  enough  to  have 
watched  the  rise  and  wane  of  the  hopes  and  ideals 
of  more  than  one  generation  of  young  Socialist 
enthusiasts  there  is  something  inexpressibly  melan- 
choly in  the  spectacle  of  the  power  still  exercised 
by  what  one  of  its  Oxford  exponents  has,  with 
unconscious  cynicism,  entitled  "the  revolutionary 
tradition"  over  the  minds  of  simple  and  credulous 
men  and  women.  What  could  be  more  pathetic, 
for  instance,   than   to   read,   in   the   report   of   the 

36 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

International  Socialist  Conference,  held  in  Vienna 
in  February,  1921,  of  a  German-Bohemian  delegate, 
who,  representing  the  debris  of  a  party  at  a  confer- 
ence of  the  debris  of  a  movement  meeting  in  the 
debris  of  a  metropolis,  declares,  in  the  peroration 
of  an  impeccably  orthodox  address,  that  he  returns 
home  more  convinced  than  ever  "that  the  Marxian 
doctrines,  the  revered  ideas  transmitted  to  us  by 
our  great  teachers,  have  been  in  no  v^ay  shaken  or 
affected  by  the  war,  but  remain  everlastingly  true"? 
These  are  the  words  of  faith,  not  of  reason,  of 
religion,  not  of  politics,  of  other-worldliness,  not 
of  this-worldliness.  When  the  time  and  place  of 
their  delivery  are  considered,  they  may  be  taken  as 
summing  up,  not  inaptly,  the  whole  strength,  and 
the  whole  inner  weakness  and  contradiction,  of  the 
modern  revolutionary  movement. 

This  contradiction  serves  also  to  explain  another 
characteristic  phenomenon  of  Socialism — the  con- 
stant disharmony  and  tug  and  strain  between  leaders 
and  followers.  Since  Socialism  is  a  this-worldly 
movement,  it  must  needs  be  organized  on  a  material 
scale,  and  from  this  it  follows  that  its  leaders  are 
necessarily  chosen  from  amongst  those  who  under- 
stand the  arts  of  organization.  But  a  Socialist 
leader  must  also  possess  the  power  of  popular  appeal, 
or  he  will  be  unable  to  command  the  enthusiasm,  or 
retain  the  confidence,  of  the  masses  whom  he  serves. 

37 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

Leadership  has  tended,  therefore,  to  pass  into  the 
hands  of  men  who  combine,  often  in  unequal  and 
always  in  uncomfortable  measure,  the  talents  of  the 
platform  and  of  the  desk,  of  the  mob-orator  and 
the  bureaucrat;  and  this  is  especially  the  case  in 
countries  where,  as  in  Britain,  the  association 
between  the  Trade  Union  and  Socialist  movements 
is  so  close  that  the  leaders  of  the  former  tend,  almost 
as  of  right,  to  rise  to  prominence  in  the  latter.  It 
is  the  characteristic  defect  of  young  and  growing 
churches  to  lay  too  many  worldly  burdens  on  their 
apostles,  to  confound  the  work  of  bishop  and 
deacon,  of  preacher  and  administrator;  but  never 
perhaps  has  this  blunder  been  committed  on  so  vast 
a  scale  as  when  men  who  are  responsible,  as  paid 
officials,  for  the  conduct  of  a  huge  mutual  benefit 
society  of  miners  or  railwaymen,  are  expected  also 
to  play  the  part  of  prophet,  preacher,  and  pioneer  to 
the  eager  masses  of  their  followers.  Small  wonder 
that,  on  the  one  side,  the  prophet  should  more  and 
more  be  swallowed  up  in  the  reformist  politician, 
and  that,  on  the  other,  enthusiasm,  ill-led  and  mis- 
represented, should  break  out  in  recurring,  if 
impotent,  movements  of  discontent.  The  surprise 
is  rather  that  the  nimbleness  of  leaders  and  the 
patience  of  followers  has  stood  the  strain  so  long. 
A  better  division  of  labour  may  be  devised,  defects 
of  organization   may  be  patched  up,  programmes 

38 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

and  formulae  may  be  revised  and  readapted;  but 
there  is  no  permanent  health  in  the  revolutionary 
movement  but  by  a  courageous  return  to  first 
principles,  by  a  reassessment  of  the  values  of  our 
civilization  and  of  the  issues  which  confront  those 
who  seek  to  amend  it.  So  long  as  the  movement 
remains  on  the  economic  plane,  the  plane  of  the 
Marxian  analysis,  it  will  be  paralysed  by  an  inner 
contradiction;  for  it  is  seeking  to  bring  about  a 
revolution  in  a  region  where  no  revolution  is 
possible,  where,  the  closer  men  approach  to  the  seat 
of  power,  the  more  practical,  governmental,  and 
conservative  they  must  needs  become.  Even  before 
1 914  it  had  become  clear  that  Socialism  had  reached 
the  cross-roads;  that  its  choice  lay  between  remain- 
ing on  the  material  plane  and  embracing  a  reformist 
Liberalism  shorn  of  the  main  features  of  the 
Marxian  ideology,  or  boldly  admitting,  as  the 
second  generation  of  Christians  admitted,  the 
literal  inadequacy  of  its  earlier  message,  and  trans- 
ferring its  activity  to  a  plane  where  economic 
problems  can  be  seen  in  their  true  light,  as  one,  if 
not  the  least  important,  of  the  issues  involved  in  the 
effort  to  bring  harmony  and  happiness  into  the 
lives  of  the  men  and  women  of  to-day. 

Such  were  the  political  doctrines  between  which 
the  allegiance  of  European  public  opinion  was 
divided  in   191 4.     Upon  them  the  war  descended 

39 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

like  a  thunderclap.  Consen^atism  was  the  first  to 
feel  the  shock;  for,  as  Sir  Edward  Grey  told  Count 
Mensdorff  in  July,  19 14,  a  European  conflagration 
meant  the  end  of  the  old  comfortable  world  of  use 
and  wont,  in  which  awkward  questions  of  principle 
could  be  ignored  like  sleeping  dogs.  Both  on  the 
Continent  and  in  Britain  the  war  has  brought  an 
awakening,  especially  among  the  younger  genera- 
tion, which  spells  the  death  of  the  old  Conservatism, 
and  of  the  vis  inerticB,  and  the  respect  for  custom 
and  authority,  which  were  its  strongest  bulwark. 
The  old  world  has  been  reluctant  to  die ;  nevertheless 
it  has  passed  away  beyond  recall.  The  Tyrolese 
burgomaster  who  signalized  the  change  of  regime 
in  his  village  by  setting  up  the  sign  of  the  'Tmperial- 
Royal  Republic"  {K.K.  Rcpublik)  is  an  apt  example 
of  the  way  in  which  what  is  after  all  a  determining 
transition  has  been  made  in  the  minds  of  millions 
of  custom-loving  men  and  women. 

But  it  was  the  Socialist  preachers  of  revolution 
who  were  perhaps  the  most  disconcerted  by  the 
advent  of  an  upheaval  which  they  had  so  frequently 
foretold  and  so  long  ceased  to  expect;  for  it 
developed  contrary  to  their  theories,  and,  what  is 
even  more  serious  for  a  good  party  man,  contrary 
to  the  plans  and  interests  of  their  organization.  It 
brought  to  a  head  the  inner  conflict  in  the  party 
between  the  men  of  practice  and  the  men  of  theory, 

40 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

between  those  who  were  willing  to  co-operate  with 
bourgeois  governments  and  those  who  stood  aloof 
from  the  foolish  issues  and  suicidal  dissensions  of 
capitalist  society — in  a  word,  between  the  patriots 
and  the  internationalists.  Not  that  there  was  a 
clean  division  of  ranks  under  the  impact  of  fact; 
that,  as  a  rule,  took  time  to  develop,  for  organiza- 
tions, however  inhuman,  have  generally  acquired 
a  human  quality  of  self -protection.  Many  and 
ingenious,  therefore,  were  the  endeavours  of  the 
faithful  and  conscientious  followers  of  Marx, 
particularly  in  Germany  and  Austria,  to  adapt  the 
texts  of  the  master  to  the  dramatic  and  testing 
events  of  the  day.  The  curious  reader  will  find  a 
record  of  him  in  the  pages  of  a  German  review — 
the  Archiv  fiir  Soaialzmssenschaft.  There  were 
some  who  held,  with  Karl  Renner,  that  a  German 
supremacy  over  Eastern  Europe  and  the  establish- 
ment of  a  United  States  from  Hamburg  to  Bagdad, 
under  the  control  of  a  single  Economic  General 
Staff,  was  an  exemplification  of  the  Marxian  doc- 
trine of  the  supremacy  of  big  businesses  over  small, 
and  of  the  growing  trustification  of  the  industrial 
world;  while  others,  more  honest  if  less  inventive, 
like  Karl  Kautsky,  found  it  not  incompatible  with 
their  Marxism  to  protest  against  the  principle,  and 
the  proposed  method,  of  the  absorption  of  Belgium. 
But  the  coolest  and  clearest  head  in  the  movement 

41 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

was  that  of  an  extremist  Russian  nobleman  long 
resident  in  Switzerland.  Heedless  of  the  incon- 
sistency involved  in  initiating  a  world-revolution 
in  the  most  industrially  backward  country  of 
Europe,  Lenin  fixed  on  Russia  as  the  focus  of 
Socialist  activity;  and  he  had  the  perspicacity  to 
see  that,  with  the  capitalist  governments  at  grips, 
those  who  sought  to  destroy  them  must  not  idly 
stand  aside,  but  rather  seek  to  extend  and  embitter 
the  conflict.  So  it  was  Lenin  who,  at  Zimmerwald 
in  191 5,  looking  round  for  a  weapon  of  disintegra- 
tion, saw  that  the  nationalist  appeal  would  meet 
his  end.  Few  of  the  Liberals  who  used  it  with  such 
dramatic  effect  in  the  later  stages  of  the  war  realized 
that  it  was  Lenin,  aiming  at  the  disintegration  of 
the  great  multi-national  empire  and  society  of 
Russia,  and,  with  luck  and  persistence,  of  other 
empires  as  well,  who  sprang  upon  a  susceptible 
public  the  stirring  watchword  of  self-determination. 
Here  is  indeed  an  apple  of  strife  from  Finland  to 
Croatia  and  Catalonia,  and  from  Ireland  to  the 
Ukraine;  but,  unfortunately  for  the  progress  of 
the  world-revolution  that  it  was  destined  to  in- 
augurate, it  was  a  strife  that  could  not  fail  to 
penetrate  the  revolutionary  party  itself.  Thus  the 
Second  International,  fruit  of  the  patient  and  care- 
ful— indeed,  too  careful — labours  of  a  Jaures,  and 
a  Vandervelde,   a   Bebel,   a   Keir   Hardie,    and   a 

42 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

Turati,  suffered  the  experience  of  schism,  like  so 
many  churches  before  it,  and  the  end  of  the  war 
found  a  Third  International  both  more  orthodox 
and  more  menacing  than  its  predecessor,  issuing 
its  thunders,  not  from  some  occasional  conference 
or  obscure  secretariat  under  the  shadow  of  a 
capitalist  government,  but  from  the  Kremlin  at 
Moscow. 

It  was  the  Liberals,  whom,  for  this  reason,  we 
have  left  to  the  last,  who  had  the  most  reason,  if 
not  to  welcome  (for  of  the  three  parties,  they  were 
the  most  averse  to  bloodshed),  at  least  to  understand 
the  war;  for  it  was  in  line  with  their  theory  of 
European  development,  and  with  their  sense  of 
values  and  estimate  of  forces.  They  were,  indeed, 
so  deadened  by  fifty  years  of  Prussian  supremacy, 
by  the  dominance  of  blood  and  iron  over  ideas  and 
ideals,  that  it  took  them  some  time  to  discover  that 
there  was  more  at  stake  for  Europe,  and  for  their 
several  countries,  than  self-defence,  and  that  much 
which  had  been  "Utopian,"  and  therefore  supremely 
attractive,  for  fifty  and  even  a  hundred  years,  was 
now  becoming  severely  practical  politics.  But  when, 
under  the  teaching  of  a  Masaryk  and  a  Benes,  and 
their  able  Jugo-Slav  colleagues,  not  to  mention 
Paderewski  and  Dmowski,  they  awoke  to  the  situa- 
tion, they  fell,  not  unnaturally,  into  the  opposite 
error,  and  both  hoped  and  believed  too  much;  or, 

43 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

perhaps,  it  would  be  truer  to  say  of  the  statesmen 
of  the  Entente  that,  too  preoccupied  to  surrender 
their  minds  either  to  hopes  or  beHefs,  they  repeated 
precepts  and  perorations,  which  caused  their  less 
experienced  followers  to  hope  and  believe  far  more 
than  themselves.  So,  in  spite  of  the  Italian  Treaty 
of  191 5,  of  which  English  Liberals,  at  any  rate, 
were  made  aware,  although  they  chose  to  turn  a 
blind  eye  to  it,  the  formulae  of  Liberalism  became 
the  order  of  the  day,  and  that  not  in  their  European, 
but  in  their  most  Anglo-Saxon  and  idealistic  setting. 
First  London,  and  then  Washington,  became  the  seat 
of  the  oracle  of  prophecy  and  propaganda;  and,  in 
the  heat  and  anguish  of  the  struggle,  cool  heads 
were  too  preoccupied,  and  no  doubt  also  too  confi- 
dently sceptical,  to  interfere  with  argument  and 
criticism.  Thus  it  was  that  by  191 8,  when  the  fabric 
of  Prussianism  collapsed,  and  the  ground  lay  clear 
and  ready  for  rebuilding,  Europe  had  already  been 
converted  to  Liberalism.  All  that  was  needed,  and 
all  that  was  expected,  was  for  the  victors  to  set  to 
work  upon  the  building  of  which  they  had  already 
passed,  and  made  public,  the  specifications.  When 
President  Wilson  informed  the  German  Govern- 
ment, on  November  5,  1918,  that  the  Allies  had 
accepted  his  "Fourteen  Points"  and  other  addresses 
as  the  basis  of  the  peace  which  was  about  to  be 
negotiated,  the  mind  of   Continental   Europe,   and 

44 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

especially  of  Germany,  leaped  back  seventy  years, 
to  the  ideals  and  enthusiasms  of  1848.  Before  many 
weeks  were  out,  it  was  not  1848,  but  1648,  of  which 
they  spoke.     But  this  belongs  to  a  later  chapter. 

B.     Institutions 

But  our  view  of  the  pre-war  world,  and  our 
sense  of  the  upheaval  to  which  it  has  been  subjected, 
will  not  be  complete  until  we  have  extended  our 
survey  to  other  and  less  purely  political  inflences,  to 
the  institutions  which,  in  our  modern  society,  serve 
as  the  recognized  agencies  for  the  origination  and 
diffusion  of  ideas.  The  chief  of  these — to  cite 
them  in  inverse  order  to  their  antiquity,  if  not  to 
their  potency — are  the  Press,  the  University,  and  the 
Church. 

The  daily  newspaper  is  the  principal  means  by 
which  public  opinion — the  life-blood  of  the  modern 
state,  as  of  its  parties  and  other  groupings — is 
formed  and  nourished;  it  supplies  both  the  informa- 
tion and  the  explanatory  comment  which  are  the 
raw  material  of  a  reasoned  judgment  upon  public 
affairs.  It  is,  therefore,  placed  in  a  position  of 
peculiar  advantage  for  seconding  the  efforts  of  the 
statesman  in  educating  his  fellow-countrj-men  upon 
current  issues.  In  the  modern  democracy  the  plat- 
form and  the  Press,  the  orator  and  the  editor,  should 

45 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

be  natural  allies  in  the  task  of  popular  enlighten- 
ment. The  work  which  falls  to  the  latter' s  share 
is  indeed  one  of  the  most  essential  public  services 
in  the  whole  range  of  the  life  of  a  civilized  com- 
munity, and,  on  the  whole,  a  glance  at  the  files  of 
the  principal  European  newspapers  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  and  at  the  distinguished  list  of  their 
contributors,  would  reveal  that  this  responsibility 
was  neither  unrecognized  nor  ill  discharged.  In 
recent  years,  however,  the  Press  has  extended  its 
sway  and  discovered  its  power  to  assume  even  more 
potent  functions.  For  the  vast  new,  inquisitive, 
and  semi-emancipated  public  brought  into  existence 
throughout  Europe  by  compulsory  schooling  it 
plays  the  part,  not  merely  of  purveyor  and  inter- 
preter of  news,  but  of  teacher  and  preacher,  guide, 
philosopher,  and  anonymous  but  unremitting 
companion.  The  power  of  the  written  word  has 
never  been  so  strong — not  even  in  the  early  days 
of  Protestantism,  when  the  Book  was  almighty — 
as  among  the  uncritical  millions  who  pin  their 
faith  to  what  they  have  "seen  in  the  paper."  The 
cold  majesty  of  print,  surrounded  by  the  pomp  and 
circumstance  of  headline  and  editorial  elaboration, 
persuades  or  intimidates  all  but  those  who  have 
consciously  trained  themselves  to  resist.  Emperors 
have  not  known  such  intimate  and  continuing  power, 
nor  the  Vatican  such  audacious  and  unquestioned 

46 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

infallibility,  as  is  enjoyed  by  those  who  have 
mastered  the  art  of  catching  the  ear,  or  tickling  the 
palate,  of  what  is  called  by  courtesy  the  reading 
public. 

For  the  spread  of  industrialism,  and  of  the 
standard  of  values  and  habits  of  life  associated  with 
it,  both  among  rich  and  poor,  has  coincided,  during 
the  last  half -century,  and  especially  during  the  last 
twenty  years,  with  a  decline  both  in  the  quality  and 
in  the  integrity  of  the  Press.  As,  on  the-one  hand, 
the  public  has  become  more  receptive  than  ever 
before  to  manufactured  opinions  and  ready-made 
ideas  and  arguments,  so,  on  the  other,  the  proprie- 
tors and  purveyors  of  the  printed  word,  neglectful 
of  their  responsibility  towards  the  intellectual  life 
of  the  community,  have  lost  sight,  more  and  more,  of 
their  informative  and  educative  function,  and 
have  surrendered  themselves  to  the  temptations  of 
commercial  success.  Here  and  there,  to  take  in- 
stances from  Britain  which  might  be  paralleled 
in  France,  Germany,  Italy,  and  elsewhere,  a  C.  P. 
Scott,  a  Spender  or  a  Garvin  (whatever  one  may 
think  of  their  judgment)  stand  out  to  remind  us 
that  writers  like  Charles  Dickens  and  John  Morley 
once  adorned  the  purlieus  of  Fleet  Street;  but  to 
survey  the  region  as  a  whole  is  regretfully  to  con- 
clude that  honesty  and  independence  are  now  at  a 
discount,  and  that  the  writer  who  wishes  to  place 

47 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

his  pen  at  the  service  of  what  should  be  the  honour- 
able profession  of  journalism  finds  it  hard  to  avoid 
trimming  his  sails,  or  even  prostituting  his  integrity, 
at  the  bidding  of  some  magnate  for  whom  owning 
a  group  of  newspapers  is  as  irresponsible  an  amuse- 
ment as  owning  a  yacht  or  a  grouse-moor. 

When  such  are  influences  behind  the  scenes  it 
is  not  surprising  that  the  foreground  should  be  little 
edifying,  and  more  than  a  little  confusing,  to  the 
uninitiated  private  citizen.  It  is  hardly  too  much 
to  declare  of  the  bulk  of  the  daily  Press  of  Europe 
to-day  that  to  read  it  without  some  previous  equip- 
ment of  critical  power,  and  of  understanding  of 
public  affairs,  is  to  darken  counsel,  and  that  as  be- 
tween a  censored  and  a  doctored  sheet  there  is  but 
little  to  chose.  At  any  rate  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
those  who  happen  to  be  aware  of  the  proprietor  of 
the  paper,  of  his  political  and  social  affiliations,  his 
ambitions  and  enmities,  and  his  relations  to  this  or 
that  group  or  influence  in  his  own  or  other  countries, 
will  read  far  more  in  and  between  the  lines  than  the 
vast  majority  of  the  ingenuous  public!  Take  but 
a  single  instance.  A  fair  proportion  of  readers 
may  be  gifted  with  some  measure  of  critical  judg- 
ment upon  what  they  read,  but  it  needs  an  unusual 
measure  of  discrimination  to  draw  conclusions  from 
what  is  passed  over  in  silence.  When  the  word  is 
given  that  a  man's  name  is  never  to  be  mentioned 

48 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

in  any  of  a  group  of  syndicated  journals  a  power  of 
excommunication  is  set  in  motion  to  which  Rome 
at  its  zenith  hardly  attained.  Such  an  edict  may 
indeed  never  be  issued;  the  knowledge  that  it  can 
be  is  in  itself  sufficient.  It  has  served  before  now 
to  provoke  confidences  and  indiscretions  which 
have  altered  the  course  of  history. 

Thus  by  the  outbreak  of  the  war  the  Press  had 
become  increasingly  commercialized,  and  had  con- 
tributed sensibly  to  a  debasement,  a  growing 
frivolity  and  irresponsibility,  in  men's  attitude  of 
mind  towards  public  affairs.  It  is  hardly  necessary 
to  recall  the  extent  to  which  these  influences  were 
intensified  by  the  war.  Clear  and  honest  thinking 
is  never  so  necessary,  but  also  never  so  difficult,  as 
in  times  of  national  passion  and  crisis ;  and  in  this 
case  the  task  was  rendered  doubly  difficult,  both 
for  journalist  and  citizen,  by  the  emergence  of 
official  agencies  of  propaganda.  When  an  ill- 
educated  democracy  is  engaged  in  a  life-and-death 
struggle  in  a  cause  as  to  which  it  is  but  imperfectly 
informed,  it  is  perhaps  unavoidable  that  systematic 
means  should  be  taken  to  enlighten  it.  But  the 
expedient  is  open  to  obvious  abuse.  When  Govern- 
ments begin  to  colour  the  Press  and  to  tamper  with 
the  publishing  trade,  the  reactions  are  as  unfortu- 
nate as  they  are  subtle  and  incalculable ;  and  the  end 
of  the  war  found  what  Burke  called  the  avenues  to 
4  49 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

public  opinion  partly  blocked  up  and  public  opinion 
itself  far  less  receptive,  and  considerably  more 
cynical,  than  before  the  official  publicity  artists 
began  their  operations. 

It  is  out  of  this  cynicism,  and  the  critical  process 
of  which  it  is  evidence,  that  improvement  is 
ultimately  to  be  looked  for.  It  is  idle  to  talk  of 
"reforming"  the  Press.  The  philanthropists  who 
buy  up  this  or  that  sheet  in  order  to  boycott  betting 
or  divorce  news  or  to  boom  the  League  of  Nations 
are  mistaking  the  symptom  for  the  cause;  it  is 
from  the  mind  of  the  reader,  not  from  the  office 
end,  that  the  change  must  come.  It  is  the  intellect- 
ual tradition  of  Scotland  which  causes  a  Scottish 
leading  article  to  be  better  argued,  on  the  average, 
than  its  English  compeer,  and  it  is  the  sincerity 
and  public  spirit  of  Lancashire  which  keeps  the 
Manchester  Guardian  up  to  the  mark.  Not  every 
district,  in  Britain  or  outside  it,  has  the  Press  it 
deserv^es;  the  particular  combination  of  capital, 
enterprise,  and  public  spirit  which  go  to  make  up 
a  great  newspaper  may  not  happen  to  be  available. 
But  the  public  has  nowhere  a  right  to  complain 
that  the  Press  which  serves  it  is  beneath  its  needs, 
for  it  can  always  get  rid  of  it  by  ceasing  to  use  it. 
There  are  plenty  of  alternatives  to  the  daily  paper, 
both  for  the  reader  and  the  advertiser;  the  book, 
the  periodical,  and  the  lecture  are  obvious  examples. 

50 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

All  that  is  needed  to  dethrone  our  modern  infallibles, 
if  we  are  annoyed  by  their  ubiquitous  impertinence, 
is  a  little  strength  of  mind  on  the  part  of  their 
disillusioned  purchasers. 

li  the  Press  should  supply  the  modern  community 
with  the  circulating  life-blood  for  its  daily  mental 
existence,  the  University  should  be  its  chief  brain- 
centre,  the  seat  of  its  most  strenuous,  persistent, 
and  vital  thinking.  No  modern  man  can  live 
without  taking  thought  for  the  morrow;  fore- 
thought, the  power  to  look  ahead  and  see  his  life 
as  a  whole,  and  to  frame  plans  and  policies  accord- 
ingly, is  the  mark  of  the  civilized,  as  against  the 
untutored  and  savage,  human  being.  And  what 
is  true  of  the  individual  holds  good  also  of  the 
nation.  Communities  which  live  from  hand  to 
mouth,  by  the  mere  jostling  and  collision  of  in- 
numerable day  by  day  impulses  and  interests,  with- 
out any  sense  of  design  or  purpose,  or  any 
consciousness  of  the  need  for  a  broader  vision, 
cannot  long  maintain  themselves  in  the  modern 
age.  Sooner  or  later,  the  tide  will  seize  them,  and 
they  will  drift  to  disaster. 

To  meet  this  need  for  comprehensive  and  long- 
range  intellectual  effort,  and  for  the  sense  of  moral 
integrity  and  elevation  resulting  from  it,  the  Univer- 
sity is  not  only  the  most  suitable,  but  practically 

51 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

the  only  available  instrument.  In  the  ancient  world 
the  stoa  and  the  market-place,  in  the  Middle  Ages 
the  monastery,  might  minister  to  the  enquiring  and 
reflective  "mind";  but  the  nature  of  modern  life, 
and  of  its  characteristic  problems  and  interests, 
has  turned  the  monastery,  in  so  far  as  it  still  sur- 
vives, into  a  backwater,  remote  from  the  living 
issues  of  the  day,  while  to  imagine  that  serious 
thinking  is  possible  in  the  urge  and  bustle  of  a 
modern  market-place,  without  an  island  of  quiet  to 
repair  to  for  refreshment  and  detachment,  is  to  fall 
into  the  error  of  trying  to  serve  God  and  Juggernaut 
at  once.  Whatever  may  be  the  other  and  more 
specialized  functions  of  the  University  in  the 
modern  community — and  it  is  not  denied  that, 
both  in  the  field  of  general  intellectual  disci- 
pline and  of  professional  training  it  has  in- 
dispensable work  to  do — it  cannot  be  absolved 
from  its  peculiar  and  responsible  duty  of  minister- 
ing to  the  deeper  spiritual  and  intellectual  needs  of 
the  age,  and  of  supplying  quality  and  substance, 
mature  reflection  and  the  tonic  of  steadying  and 
sympathetic  criticism,  to  its  ideals  and  aspirations. 
It  is  in  this  and  no  mere  ornamental  sense  of  the 
word  that  Universities  can  and  ought  to  be  re- 
garded as  homes  and  radiating  centres  of  culture. 

Such  was  the  work  performed  and  the  influence 
exerted  by  Universities  in  the  heyday  of  their  power 

52 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

and  greatness,  when  students,  young  and  old  alike, 
repaired  to  Paris  and  Prague  and  Oxford  as  sources 
of  living  knowledge  and  inspiration.  And  such,  if 
in  lesser  measure,  owing  partly  to  the  competition 
of  the  printed  with  the  spoken  word,  was  the  in- 
fluence of  the  continental,  and  not  least  of  the 
German  Universities,  during  a  large  part  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  At  a  time  when  Newman  was 
proclaiming  to  deaf  ears  his  immortal  Idea  of  a 
University,  and  when  Oxford  was  instituting  com- 
petitive examinations  as  a  much  needed  improve- 
ment upon  old-fashioned  systems  of  patronage, 
Matthew  Arnold  could  point  to  Germany  as  the 
chief  standard-bearer  of  spiritual  freedom  in  its 
struggle  against  the  debasing  influences  of  the  age. 
"What  I  admire  in  Germany,"  he  wrote,  after  his 
visit  there  in  1865,  "is  that  while  there  too  in- 
dustrialism, that  great  modern  power,  is  making 
at  Berlin,  and  Leipzig,  and  Elberfeld,  the  most 
successful  and  rapid  progress,  the  idea  of  culture, 
culture  of  the  only  true  sort,  is  in  Germany  a  living 
power  also.  Petty  towns  have  a  University  whose 
teaching  is  famous  throughout  Europe ;  and  the  King 
of  Prussia  and  Count  Bismarck  resist  the  loss  of  a 
great  savant  from  Prussia  as  they  would  resist  a 
political  check.  If  true  culture  ever  becomes  a 
civilizing  power  in  the  world,  and  is  not  overlaid 
by   fanaticism,   by   industrialism,   or  by   frivolous 

53 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

pleasure-seeking,  it  will  be  to  the  faith  and  zeal  of 
this  homely  and  much-ridiculed  German  people  that 
the  great  result  will  be  mainly  owing." 

During  the  half-century  which  has  elapsed  since 
these  words  were  written  the  European  University, 
and  with  it  the  European  ideal  and  standard  of 
culture,  has  suffered  a  decline  comparable,  in  its  own 
sphere  of  activity  and  temptation,  to  that  of  the 
Press.  If  it  has  not  yet,  or  only  in  small  measure, 
become  commercialized,  it  has  succumbed  to  a 
characteristic  and  subtle  foitn  of  industrialization. 
It  has  become  the  victim  of  that  division  of  labour, 
that  specialization,  upon  which  Adam  Smith  fixed 
as  the  distinguishing  mark  of  the  modern  age. 
Where  fifty  years  ago  the  University,  if  ministering, 
in  some  countries  at  any  rate  (though  not  in  Ger- 
many) to  an  unduly  restricted  range  of  students, 
sent  forth  into  the  life  of  the  community  men  who 
had  acquired  the  power  to  think  for  themselves  and 
to  let  their  minds  play  truly  on  the  great  enduring 
interests  of  human  life  and  society,  to-day  their 
tendency  is  more  and  more  to  produce  a  manufac- 
tured and  hall-marked  article,  designed  to  fill  a 
particular  niche  in  some  organized  scheme  or  sys- 
tem. The  old  University  course,  with  its  wide  and 
infectious  appeal,  its  ideal  of  the  universitas  or 
studiiim  generate,  the  unity  and  integration  of 
human  knowledge,  has  been  dissipated  and  depart- 

54 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

mentalized  by  the  intrusion  of  one  favoured  subject 
after  another  to  a  position  of  equality  with  the  more 
general  human  studies  and  interests,  while  the  scholar 
or  teacher  himself,  instead  of  being  a  "master"  of 
the  old  style,  alive  to  all  the  issues  and  interests 
and  implications  of  some  noble  and  wide-ranging 
area  of  man's  learning  and  achievement,  is  too  often 
just  a  laborious  hack,  who  has  drudged  himself  into 
a  doctorate  by  some  conscientious  compilation  of 
other  men's  thoughts — a  mere  piece  of  dead  and 
unresponsive  stone  in  a  vast  cold  mosaic  of  "re- 
search" of  which  it  is  left  to  posterity  to  discover 
the  pattern  and  assess  the  value.  When  it  is  claimed 
for  our  present-day  academies,  that  they  have  dis- 
covered how  to  apply  scientific  method  to  this  or 
that  branch  of  human  enquiry,  too  often  all  that  is 
meant  is  that  they  have  developed  some  mechani- 
cal scheme  for  putting  live  knowledge  into 
cold  storage,  in  the  vain  belief  that  "facts,"  set  out 
and  documented  in  a  learned  publication,  will  emerge 
some  day  of  their  own  power  as  fresh  and  rosy  as 
frozen  apples  from  the  Antipodes.  The  modern 
world  has,  in  fact,  discovered  how  to  organize  fac- 
tories and  syndicates  of  knowledge,  and  how  to 
use  students,  and  even  graduates,  as  mere  labourers 
and  helots  without  either  the  abilities  or  the  oppor- 
tunity for  promotion  to  a  worthier  situation.  There 
is   many   an   untutored   peasant   and   workman,   a 

55 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

shepherd  out  on  the  hills  or  a  cobbler  or  tailor  at 
his  bench,  whose  trained  intelligence  and  all-round 
knowledge,  interests,  and  even  refinement,  would 
bear  favourable  comparison  with  the  helpless  and 
ill-starred  victims  of  academic  industrialization. 

If  it  be  asked  whence  this  debasement  and  perver- 
sion of  University  ideals  and  methods  has  proceeded, 
candor  must  needs  reply  that  it  is  Germany  who 
has  set  the  example  and  forced  the  pace.     The  last 
half-century  has  witnessed  in  Germany  an  intellec- 
tual transformation,  a  change  in  outlook  and  values 
and   quality,    such   as   her   admirers    in    Victorian 
England  could  not  have  been  expected  to  anticipate ; 
for  the  yielding  plasticity  of  the  German  mind — its 
sensitiveness     and     impressionability     to     external 
conditions   and   compulsions — is   too   remote   from 
stolid  British  habits   for  an  Englishman  easily  to 
conceive.      The    fact,    however,    remains    that    the 
"culture"   of  which  the  world  heard   so  much   in 
1914    was    something    wholly    different    from    the 
"civilizing   power,"    and   the    sincere,    ardent,    and 
almost  religious  service  of  truth  and  freedom  which 
characterized  the  Germany  of    1864.     During  the 
last  two  generations  Germany  has  been  living  on 
the  reputation  of  her  Victorian  giants — for  giants 
they    were — and    of    those    of    their    pupils    and 
descendants    who    have    inherited    their    spirit    and 
tradition.     Meanwhile,   culture   had   become   more 

56 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

and  more  an  annex  of  the  German,  and  especially 
(owing  to  the  increasing  attractiveness  of  the 
metropolis)  of  the  Prussian,  state,  and,  under  the 
aegis  of  a  vigilant  and  autocratic  government,  free- 
dom of  thought  and  integrity  of  soul  declined. 
Culture,  in  its  most  limited  and  mechanical  sense, 
became  an  article  of  exportation  and  advertisement, 
and  the  young  and  aspiring  Universities  of  Central 
and  Eastern  Europe,  and  even  of  France,  Italy, 
Britain,  and  America,  have  been  touched  and 
tainted  by  its  arrogant  and  devitalizing  influence. 
How  deadening  to  the  moral  sense,  and  at  the 
same  time  how  superficially  impressive  and  plausible, 
this  influence  has  been  can  best  be  realized  by  any- 
one who,  like  the  present  writer,  has  had  occasion 
to  read  a  great  amount  of  what  was  written  by 
German  philosophers,  historians,  and  economists  on 
the  war,  and  to  observe  the  way  in  which,  not  only 
the  smaller  fry,  but  men  with  European  names, 
such  as  Lamprecht  and  Eduard  Meyer,  Troeltsch 
and  Eucken  and  Kerschensteiner,  not  merely  al- 
lowed their  patriotic  feelings  to  run  away  with  them 
— this  is  but  a  human  weakness,  pardonable  even  in 
a  professor — but  sought  to  readjust  their  Weltan- 
schauung, their  whole  philosophy  and  scheme  of 
values,  in  order  to  bring  it  into  conformity  with  a 
government  as  to  whose  conduct  and  motives  they 
were  content  to  be  left  in  the  dark.    The  bankruptcy 

57 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

of  the  pre-war  regime  in  Germany  touches  far  more 
than  its  statesmanship.  It  is  the  debacle  of  the 
whole  system  of  specialization  of  which  the  entrust- 
ing by  the  patient  and  credulous  German  people  of 
its  political  interests  to  experts  is  but  a  single 
example.  The  nation  which  allowed  itself  to  be 
governed  by  a  bumptious  dilettante  like  the  Kaiser, 
aided  by  bureaucrats  who  had  trained  themselves 
to  make  the  best  sense  they  could  out  of  his  whims, 
was  content  also  to  draw  its  general  ideas,  in  the 
deficiency  of  real  intellectual  leadership  and  insight, 
from  pamphleteers  and  pseudo-philosophers  who  had 
mastered  the  easy  art  of  manipulating  abstract 
terms.  In  the  event,  the  German  people  is  faced 
with  a  mass  of  debris — political,  intellectual,  and 
social — even  vaster  than  it  as  yet  suspects,  and  the 
world  of  her  neighbours  and  former  admirers,  which 
was  suffering,  if  in  milder  form,  from  a  similar 
sapping  of  its  intellectual  integrity  and  a  similar 
absence  of  leadership  and  initiative  in  its  brain- 
centres,  is  gradually  becoming  conscious  of  the  full 
extent  of  the  upheaval  in  prestige  and  influence,  as 
in  methods,  quality,  and  values,  entailed  by  the 
events  of  the  last  seven  years.  The  old  universitas 
of  European  culture  will  not  be  rebuilt  in  a  day; 
but  it  is  time  for  the  new  generation  of  students  to 
realize  the  task  which  awaits  them  if  European 
civilization  is  to  survive. 

58 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

In  a  survey  of  the  intellectual  influences  of  our 
time  it  would  be  discourteous  to  omit  the  Christian 
Churches,  for  they  represent  the  oldest  organized 
teaching  institutions  in  the  community,  and  they 
still  retain  a  large  measure  of  power  over  the  minds 
of  men  and  women. 

Europe  is  still  considered,  in  common  parlance, 
as  a  Christian  continent,  and  it  is  on  this  assumption 
— to  preach  a  religion  and  a  way  of  life  of  which 
Europe  is  regarded  as  having  been  for  some  sixteen 
centuries  the  authoritative  home  and  centre — that 
European  missionaries  are  maintained  throughout 
other  parts  of  the  globe.  It  may  be  doubted, 
however,  whether,  in  any  real  or  deep  sense, 
European  society,  or  any  considerable  proportion 
of  European  men  and  women,  in  any  one  of  the 
seventy  generations  which  have  elapsed  since 
Christianity  became  the  official  religion  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  has  ever  accepted,  or  even  en- 
deavoured to  understand  and  apply,  the  teaching 
and  outlook  of  its  Founder.  There  has  indeed 
never  been  a  generation  without  Christians,  but 
their  influence  on  public  affairs  has  been  limited 
and  intermittent,  and  often  very  wrong-headed  in 
application,  so  that  the  good  that  a  Bede  and  an 
Anselm,  a  Hus  and  a  Wiclif,  a  St.  Francis, 
a  Savonarola,  and  a  Father  Damien  have  done  in 
the  name  of  their  common  Master,  has  been  more 

59 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

than  outweighed  by  the  wars  and  the  persecutions, 
the  crimes  of  intolerance  and  ambition,  the  worldly 
vanity  and  hardness,  of  those  who  acted,  and  had 
the  power  to  command  others  to  act,  in  the  same 
name.  The  long  history  of  European  Christianity, 
if  it  ever  comes  to  be  written,  will  be  the  history 
of  a  submerged  and  hidden  movement — the  tracing 
of  the  course  of  a  pure  but  tenuous  stream  of  living 
water  which  has  refreshed  the  souls  of  innumerable 
men  and  women  who  have  penetrated  to  its  secret 
recesses,  but  has  but  seldom  emerged  into  the 
open,  to  flow  through  the  broad  and  dusty  cities 
where  the  world's  main  activities  are  carried  on. 

However  that  may  be,  in  the  present  age,  at  any 
rate,  the  so-called  Christian  Churches  are  but 
little  representative  of  the  true  Christian  spirit, 
and  their  influence  and  work,  both  on  its  intellectual 
and  more  purely  spiritual  side,  has  been  affected, 
as  was  inevitable,  by  the  material  and  vulgarizing 
forces  of  the  age.  There  has,  indeed,  in  the  Europe 
of  the  last  few  decades,  been  a  perceptible  increase 
of  interest  in  the  problems  and  the  experience  of 
the  religious  life.  Thanks  mainly  to  the  spread  of 
popular  education,  men  and  women  are  everywhere 
seeking  to  rid  themselves  of  shams  and  shibboleths, 
and  to  find  guidance  and  inspiration  in  the  search 
for  the  abiding  realities  of  human  fate  and  existence. 
But  not  merely  do  the  Churches,   almost  without 

60 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

exception,  stand  aloof  from  their  endeavours,  but 
they  are  in  general  the  most  serious  and  discouraging 
obstacle  in  the  path  of  the  seeker  after  truth. 
What  more  ironical  spectacle  can  be  imagined  than 
that,  at  a  time  when  earnest  minds  are  everywhere 
bewildered  by  the  difficulty  of  harmonizing  the 
laws  and  processes  of  the  visible  and  the  invisible 
realms  of  reality,  when  the  discord  between  religion 
and  science,  faith  and  knowledge,  must  be  resolved, 
and  resolved  quickly,  if  mankind  is  to  be  saved 
from  a  rending  in  twain  of  its  inner  life,  greater 
than  any  of  the  mere  external  schisms  which  have 
taken  place  in  earlier  ages,  the  collected  religious 
dignitaries  of  the  English-speaking  world,  number- 
ing some  three  hundred  and  fifty  bishops,  should 
have  passed  a  sponge  over  this  whole  discussion 
by  merely  reiterating  a  set  of  formulae,  antiquated 
in  expression,  if  not  in  meaning,  drawn  up 
at  a  similar  conference  in  Asia  Minor  sixteen 
centuries  ago;  or  that,  with  Europe  materially 
and  spiritually  in  chaos,  the  successor  of  the 
fisherman  at  the  Vatican  should  be  concerning 
himself,  purely  for  reasons  of  material  policy, 
with  the  renewal  of  diplomatic  relations  with 
France,  with  the  safeguarding  of  his  organization, 
and  the  continuance  of  a  celibate  priesthood, 
in  the  land  of  John  Hus,  and  with  the  preservation 
of  the   Moslem   power   at  Constantinople   and   in 

6i 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

Nearer  Asia,  in  order  to  neutralize  the  progress 
made  by  a  great  sister  organization  of  Christians? 
Is  it  too  much  to  say,  in  the  face  of  all  this,  that  it 
is  the  organized  Churches,  and  the  habit  of  mind 
they  foster — or,  rather,  fossilize — which  stand 
chiefly  in  the  way  of  the  religious  revival  that  has  so 
often  been  predicted  and  so  often  postponed?  If  by 
a  miracle  the  existing  religious  organizations  could 
be  dissolved  and  their  endowments  not  distributed 
but  obliterated,  what  opportunities  would  be  opened 
out  and  what  energies  released  for  the  religious 
aspirations  of  modern  men  and  for  the  devising  of 
better  means  for  their  satisfaction ! 

"It  is  the  letter  which  killeth  and  the  spirit  which 
maketh  alive."  In  the  modern  age  the  analogue 
to  the  letter,  and  its  jealous  guardian,  is  the  organi- 
zation. Religion  is  imprisoned  by  its  professional 
keepers.  And  this  has  become  as  true  of  the 
Protestant  Churches,  which  owe  their  origin  to  a 
great  movement  of  spiritual  liberation,  of  protest, 
not  merely  against  the  abuses,  but  against  the 
fact  itself  of  religious  organization,  as  of  their 
Catholic  and  Orthodox  colleagues.  The  hardening 
of  Catholicism  into  a  system  where,  for  all  the 
beauty  of  its  ritual  and  the  majesty  of  its  traditional 
appeal,  for  all  the  spacious  liberty  allowed  in 
non-essentials,  the  believer  is  committed  to  the 
surrender  of  his   spiritual   freedom  and   initiative, 

62 


THE  UPHEAVAL 

is  a  problem  and  a  spectacle  with  which  European 
minds  have  been  familiar  for  many  centuries.     But 
the  similar  hardening  of  the  Protestant  Churches, 
who  can  neither  claim  so  imposing  an  ancestry  nor 
rival  Rome  in  its  outward  graces,  is  a  fact  of  the 
last  few  generations;  and  it  is  due  to  the  stealthy 
pressure  of  material  cares,  to  the  silently  growing 
power    of    organization    and    system,    to    the    pre- 
dominance  of  the   Marthas   over  the   Maries.      If 
neither  in  France  nor  in  Germany,  neither  in  Holland 
nor  Hungary  nor  Switzerland,  nor  among  the  Free 
Churches  of  Britain,   a  power  of  intellectual   and 
spiritual    leadership    is   to   be    discerned,    the    main 
cause  is  that  the  Churches  have  become  accustomed 
to  regard  themselves,  according  to  the  gospel,  not 
of   their   Master,    but   of    the    Guild-Socialists,    as 
professional    organizations,    and    that,    in    the    at- 
mosphere of  endowment  controversies  and  Million 
Guinea   funds,   and   of   the   worldly   intrigues   and 
entanglements  which  these  involve,  deeper  interests 
are  lost  sight  of.    "He  that  seeketh  to  save  his  soul 
shall  lose  it"  is  as  true  of  the  life  of  organizations 
as  of  the  individual.     In  spite,  if  not  because,  of 
the  fifty  years'  struggle  of  the  Church  of  England  to 
preserve  its  schools  the  ex-Church  school  scholars 
who  fought  in  France  were  found  by  the  chaplains 
to  be  as  ignorant  of  the  faith,  and  as  indifferent  to 
their  ministrations,  as  their  more  reputedly  godless 

63 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

comrades;  nor  do  the  efforts  of  the  Free  Churches 
to  arrest  the  decline  in  the  statistics  of  their  Sunday 
school  scholars  and  Church  members  absolve  them 
from  the  duty  of  attending  to  the  task  for  which 
they  were  founded.  The  war  has  often  been 
described  as  proof  of  the  impotence  of  the  Christian 
Churches.  It  would  be  truer  to  say  that  modern 
life  as  a  whole  is  a  demonstration  that  neither  the 
world  nor  the  churches  have  even  attempted  to 
be  Christian.  But  the  war  has  certainly  set  this, 
the  greatest  and  most  baffling  of  all  our  problems, 
in  a  new  and  glaring  light,  and  made  it  more  urgent 
than  ever  for  all  good  Europeans  to  apply  their 
minds  to  its  solution. 


64 


PART  II 
THE  SETTLEMENT 

There  is  no   bitterer  pain   than   to   have   much 
knozvledge  and  no  power. — Herodotus. 


65 


INTRODUCTORY 

•T^HE  events  which  now  fall  briefly  to  be  described 
*  have,  in  their  sadness  and  in  their  irony,  hardly, 
if  ever,  been  equalled  in  the  long  history  of  mankind. 
A  whole  continent,  worn  out  by  effort  and  suffering, 
by  suspense  and  privation,  looked  to  three  men,  in 
whom  the  concentrated  organization  of  a  modern 
war  and  the  chances  of  politics  had  vested  supreme 
power  over  its  destinies,  to  bring  it  lasting  justice 
and  appeasement.  They  failed  it.  The  gifts  which 
had  made  of  the  one  a  great  teacher  and  preacher,  of 
the  second  a  great  energizer,  and  of  the  third  the 
heroic  veteran  of  a  desperate  hour,  were  not  the  gifts 
for  which  Europe  called.  Ignorant  of  their  limita- 
tions, they  essayed  a  task  with  which  Fate,  per- 
haps in  mercy,  had  forbidden  a  Lincoln  and  a 
Cavour,  each  on  a  lesser  stage,  to  grapple.  While 
they  fumbled  with  the  tiller  of  the  ship  of  Europe's 
fortunes  it  seemed,  to  one  onlooker  at  least,  as 
though  the  devil  himself  were  seizing  it  from  their 
hands. 

"The  first  six  months  after  the  armistice,"  re- 
67 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

marked  a  high  French  authority  recently,  "put 
Europe  back  a  hundred  years."  It  is  still  in  our 
power  to  make  this  an  over-statement,  but  it  sums 
up  the  impression  made  by  the  course  of  events  on 
the  minds  of  the  host  of  subsidiary  actors  who  were 
powerless  to  change  the  course  of  the  plot.  Every- 
thing went  wrong,  from  the  first  call  for  negotiations 
in  October  until  the  final  rejection  of  the  Treaties 
by  the  United  States  Senate. 

The  story  opens  at  the  end  of  September,  1918, 
but  in  order  to  grasp  its  full  significance  a  short 
retrospect  is  necessary. 


68 


CHAPTER  I 

AUGUST,    I914-SEPTEMBER,    I918 

THE  record  must,  from  the  nature  of  the  situation, 
be  written,  strategically  speaking,  from  the  view- 
point of  the  land-power ;  for,  whether  it  be  regarded 
as  "imprisoned."  or  as  holding  the  interior  lines, 
it  was  driven  as  inevitably  to  take  the  initiative  as 
the  sea-power  was  driven,  however  reluctantly,  to 
a  war  of  attrition. 

The  German  General  Staff,  working  on  Schlief- 
fen's  plans  for  the  invasion  of  France  through  Bel- 
gium, attempted  to  secure  a  quick  decision  "before 
the  leaves  fell,"  and  before  the  blockade  became 
effective.  But  the  German  machine  was  stopped, 
and  then  rolled  back,  by  French  valour,  skill,  and 
alertness,  reinforced,  if  as  yet  but  in  small  measure, 
by  British  tenacity.  The  Marne  was  the  decisive 
battle  of  the  war.  Henceforward  cool  heads  knew, 
what  Rathenau  and  others  had  feared,  that  the  strug- 
gle must  be  long,  that  time  was  on  the  side  of  sea- 
power,  and  that  to  conquer  whole  kingdoms  was  not 

69 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

a  sure  road  to  victory.  Nevertheless,  the  annexation 
of  fresh  territories  on  the  Continent  would  bring 
both  supplies  and  prestige.  When  the  Allies  had 
broken  the  attack  on  the  Iser  Tirpitz  bethought  him, 
too  late,  of  the  possibilities  of  the  submarine,  but  the 
soldiers  looked  eastward.  Their  choice  lay  between 
the  north-east,  with  the  possible  rout  and  elimina- 
tion of  Russia,  and  the  south-east,  where  lay  the 
Danube  waterway  and  the  road  to  Turkey.  Helf- 
ferich,  with  his  eye  on  Roumanian  grain  and  oil,  ad- 
vised the  former.  Falkenhayn,  who  had  taken 
Moltke's  place  after  the  Marne,  chose  the  latter. 
Although  Turkey  had  now  come  into  the  war,  she 
must  wait  as  yet  for  her  munitions. 

It  was  a  precious  interval  for  the  Entente.  If 
Greece  would  co-operate,  Serbia  would  be  relieved, 
Bulgaria  intimidated  or  won  over,  and  the  Dar- 
danelles opened  by  a  rapid  stroke.  King  Constantine 
intervened  with  an  unconstitutional  veto ;  the  Turks, 
who  had  warning,  were  able  to  strengthen  their 
defences;  the  British  failed  to  push  home  their 
naval  attack,  and,  when  their  land-forces  arrived 
five  months  later,  could  gain  but  painful  inches  of 
ground.  The  surprise  landing  at  Suvla  promised 
better  fortune,  and  there  are  men  still  living  who 
looked  down  from  the  crest  above  upon  the  inner 
waters  widening  to  Gallipoli.  But  there  was  a  de- 
lay in  the  operation.     Turkish  reinforcements  ar- 

70 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

rived,  the  attempt  was  abandoned,  and  the  evacuation 
followed.  The  blunder  of  a  commander,  or  of  a 
subordinate,  had  prevented  the  sea-power  from 
piercing  the  one  open  joint  in  the  land-power's 
armour.  The  Black  Sea,  and  the  great  Russian 
world  behind  it,  remained  cut  off  from  the  ocean. 
The  result  was  three  more  years  of  war  and  the  Rus- 
sian Revolution!  So  many  ills  could  a  failure  of 
judgment  in  one  poor  mortal  bring  upon  a  continent 
and  upon  mankind ! 

Meanwhile,  despite  the  intervention  of  Italy, 
German  arms  were  pressing  eastward.  By  the 
autumn  of  191 5,  after  Suvla  and  the  occupation  of 
Warsaw  and  Kovno,  Falkenhayn  was  free  to  turn 
south.  Bulgaria,  after  disposing  of  her  harvest, 
joined  the  Germans  in  overrunning  Serbia.  The 
remnant  of  a  heroic  army  made  its  way  across 
Albania  to  Durazzo,  and,  eventually,  to  Corfu.  It 
was  a  second  and  almost  more  terrible  Kossovo,  but 
the  more  quickly  to  be  retrieved.  German  prestige 
was  at  its  zenith,  but  victory  was  no  nearer. 
Roumania  remained  neutral. 

Falkenhayn  decided  to  cripple  France  before 
Britain's  new  army  could  take  the  field.  For  four 
months  he  hammered  at  Verdun.  The  poilii  did  not 
let  him  pass,  and  on  July  i,  1916,  Kitchener's  Army 
struck  on  the  Somme,  the  first  battle  in  which  tanks, 
omen  of  a  coming  superiority  of  offence  over  de- 

71 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

fence,  at  least  on  the  land,  took  their  ungainly  part. 
At  the  end  of  August  Roumania  threw  in  her  lot 
with  the  Allies,  and  rashly  invaded  Transylvania. 
Falkenhayn  gave  place  to  Hindenburg  and  Luden- 
dorff,  who  circumvented  the  Roumanians  by  a  rapid 
advance  on  the  Danube.  Bucharest  was  occupied 
in  December.  Helfferich  was  assured  of  his  sup- 
plies. The  winter  of  1916-1917  was  indeed  to  be 
terrible,  but,  so  far  as  food  was  concerned,  the  im- 
mediate anxiety  was  removed. 

The  land-power  now  seemed  more  triumphant 
than  ever.  After  its  many  victories  all  it  needed, 
was  finality.  Within  a  few  days  of  the  occupation 
of  Bucharest  the  Kaiser  and  his  three  nominal  as- 
sociates made  a  grandiloquent  offer  of  peace.  A 
few  days  later  President  Wilson,  whose  intended 
intervention  had  been  delayed,  first  by  the  Lille 
deportations  and  then  by  the  Presidential  election, 
issued  a  note  to  the  belligerents  asking  them  to 
state  their  war-aims,  and  recommending  "peace 
without  victory."  But  before  his  action  could  ma- 
ture, Ludendorff,  aided  by  strong  popular  forces  in 
Germany,  had  converted  the  Kaiser  to  the  policy 
of  using  the  submarine  to  the  limit.  The  German 
people,  who  were  living  largely  on  swedes,  were 
prepared  to  stake  all  on  a  single  throw  to  end  the 
war.  In  vain  Helfferich  argued  that  America  would 
intervene,  and  would  save,  and  send  Britain,  more 

72 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

additional  food  than  the  submarine  would  sink.  He 
saw  Hoover  in  a  vision;  had  he  shown  him  in 
person  it  is  doubtful  whether  he  would  have  con- 
vinced men  like  Ludendorff  and  the  Kaiser,  whose 
minds  moved  in  the  old  military  groves.  But  he 
might  have  secured  a  six  weeks'  respite — the  six 
weeks  which,  as  the  event  proved,  sealed  the  doom 
of  the  German  power.  On  March  12  came  the 
Russian  Revolution.  It  meant,  as  Berlin  at  least 
could  realize,  the  end  of  the  Russian  resistance. 
With  the  Eastern  front  eliminated,  with  America 
still  neutral,  and  with  the  resulting  moral  and  finan- 
cial situation,  the  war  might  well  have  been  won. 
But  it  was  too  late  now  to  capitulate  to  Washington. 
The  Russian  disintegration,  coinciding  with  the 
failure  to  General  Nivelle's  offensive  in  France,  re- 
lieved the  military  but  embarrassed  the  political 
situation.  In  April  Count  Czernin,  now  Foreign 
Minister  for  the  young  Emperor  Karl,  reported  that 
the  Dual  Monarchy  could  not  face  another  winter's 
fighting.  When  Ludendorff  would  not  listen  to 
him  he  appealed  to  Erzberger.  One  result  was  a 
confused  political  crisis  in  Germany  in  July,  the 
fall  of  Bethmann-Hollweg,  and  the  passing  of  a 
moderate  war-aims  resolution  by  the  Reichstag, 
which  the  new  Chancellor,  Michaelis,  claimed  the 
right  to  interpret  as  he  thought  fit.  Another  was 
the  Stockholm  Socialist  conference,  wisely  boycotted 

73 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

by  the  governments  of  France,  Italy,  and,  in  the 
face  of  a  naive  opposition,  Britain. 

Meanwhile  the  submarine,  which  looked,  for  some 
weeks  in  the  spring,  as  if  it  had  found  the  heel  of  the 
oceanic  Achilles,  was  discovering  the  limitations  of 
its  owner.  Its  object  was  defeated,  but  only  just 
defeated,  by  the  convoy  system,  and  by  the  perfec- 
tion of  the  inter-allied  shipping  organization.  Peace 
seemed  further  off  than  ever.  True,  the  Eastern 
army  was  now  available.  Nevertheless,  man-power 
was  running  short,  and  the  American  military 
strength,  if,  as  was  to  be  feared,  it  could  be  trans- 
ported to  Europe,  was  limitless.  Best  strike  soon 
and  hard  to  break  the  opposing  morale.  It  was  the 
only  road  to  victory  still  open  to  the  land-power. 

Italy  had  been  weakened  by  Socialist  and  Catholic 
propaganda.  Ludendorff  selected  her  for  the  first 
blow.  It  would  carry  Austria-Hungary  through  the 
winter,  and  the  news  of  the  Germans  in  Venice 
and  Verona  might  even  end  the  war.  Caporetto 
followed;  but  its  result  was  to  make,  not  to  break, 
the  morale  at  which  the  stroke  was  aimed.  The 
attack  was  stayed  on  the  Piave,  but  its  impact  was 
felt,  not  only  in  Italy,  but  in  certain  English  country 
houses.  Early  in  December,  Lord  Lansdowne 
wrote  a  letter  to  the  Daily  Telegraph  which  seemed 
to  show  that  British  morale  was  at  last  really 
weakening.     Ludendorff,  no  doubt  over-estimating 

74 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

the  significance  of  the  new  alliance  between  a  small 
Conservative  and  a  small  "Labour"  clique,  decided 
to  strike  at  Britain.  The  offensive  launched  on 
March  21  was  the  result.  It  found  the  Allies  un- 
ready. For  though,  with  characteristic  insight, 
Mr.  Lloyd  George  had  read  in  Caporetto  the  lesson 
of  a  unified  Allied  command,  long  since  demanded 
by  the  French,  he  withdrew  the  suggestion,  with 
a  promptitude  equally  characteristic,  when  it 
encountered  obstacles  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
It  was  not  till  March  26,  at  Doullens,  in  a  gloomy 
hour,  that,  on  the  initiative  of  Lord  Milner,  General 
Foch  was  set  in  supreme  command  of  the  Allied 
forces. 

The  last  great  German  effort  for  victory  was 
doomed  to  failure  within  a  few  weeks.  Ludendorff 
has  stated  that  it  was  not  until  after  August  8 
that  he  realized  that  the  Allied  counter-attack 
could  not  be  stayed,  and  that  power  was  slipping 
from  his  grasp.  His  nimbler  colleague  Kithlmann 
saw  it  many  weeks  sooner,  and  on  June  24  he  in- 
formed the  Reichstag  that  he  saw  no  prospect  of 
an  early  victory.  By  July  31,  the  beginning  of 
the  fifth  war-year,  the  Frankfurter  Zcitung  was  at 
last  admitting  that  Germany  would  have  to  face 
the  whole  force  of  America;  in  other  words,  that 
the  submarine  must  be  discounted,  and  that  the 
war  could  not  be  won.     But  the  soldiers  would  not, 

75 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

and  the  politicians  could  not,  face  the  facts  of  a 
desperate  situation.  The  one  practical  suggestion 
— that  Germany  should  make  common  cause  with 
the  anti-Bolsheviks,  and  retrieve  in  the  East  what 
she  was  losing  in  the  West  and  overseas — made  by 
Helfferich  after  his  brief  visit  to  Moscow  in  August, 
was  spurned  by  the  vacillating  directors  of  German 
policy.  They  preferred  instead  to  supplement  the 
Brest-Litovsk  Treaty  by  a  commercial  agreement, 
concluded  with  an  envoy  whose  real  mission  was 
to  pave  the  way  for  a  German  Revolution.  So 
through  August  and  September  events  which  were 
the  prelude  to  catastrophe  took  their  course  in  the 
West,  on  the  Piave,  in  Salonika,  and  in  Allenby's 
headquarters  in  Palestine. 


7« 


CHAPTER  II 

SEPTEMBER  29-NOVEMBER    II,    I918 

/^N  September  29  the  storm  broke.  The  bolt  fell, 
^^  as  in  1 9 14,  in  the  Balkans.  The  long  train  of 
events  which  had  been  laid  at  Sarajevo  culminated  in 
the  valley  of  the  Vardar.  Bulgaria  submitted  to  the 
Allies  in  an  armistice.  King  Ferdinand  fled.  Allied 
troops  were  free  to  enter  his  capital  and  to  move 
northwards  to  Buda-Pesth,  or  eastwards  to  Con- 
stantinople, as  they  might  wish. 

The  news  was  followed  immediately  at  Berlin  by 
the  resignation  of  Count  Hertling  and  the  appoint- 
ment of  Prince  Max  von  Baden  as  German  Chan- 
cellor, with  control  over  the  military  power.  The 
defection  of  Bulgaria  from  what  was  called  the 
Quadruple  Alliance,  but  was,  in  effect,  a  military 
empire,  meant,  for  anyone  in  either  camp  who 
had  eyes  to  see,  the  end  of  the  war;  for  it  was  the 
end  of  that  Prussian  militarism  against  which,  as 
the  world  had  been  told  a  thousand  times,  the  war 
was   being   made.      "This   is   the   greatest   day    in 

77 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

British  history  since  Waterloo,"  remarked  a  leading 
British  official  to  the  present  writer  when  the  news 
arrived.  The  incubus  which  had  lain  heavy  on 
Europe  for  fifty  years  was  removed.  The  fron- 
tiers of  the  German  dominion  had  shrunk  in  a  day, 
as  the  German  Press  was  admitting,  from  Nazareth 
and  Uskub  and  Kovno  to  Passau  and  Memel. 
"Mitteleuropa"  had  passed  into  history,  or  rather 
into  romance.  All  that  remained  was  to  press  home 
the  victory  and  to  perfect  the  schemes,  already  well 
on  foot,  for  the  political  and  economic  settlement 
of  Europe.  Those  with  inside  knowledge  reckoned 
that  fighting  might  go  on  for  another  six  weeks, 
and,  to  give  precision  to  his  estimate,  November  lo 
was  hazarded  by  one  of  them  as  the  date  of  the 
close  of  hostilities.  It  has  frequently  been  stated 
since  that  the  events  of  October  and  November, 
the  collapse  of  the  German  resistance,  took  the 
world  by  surprise.  This  may  have  been  true  of 
the  public,  of  the  soldiers,  who  naturally  could  not 
see  how  hollow  the  iron  shell  of  military  organiza- 
tion they  still  saw  in  front  of  them  had  become, 
and  of  some  of  the  more  slapdash  politicians;  it 
was  not  true  of  those  whose  business  it  was  to  ad- 
vise them  from  the  fullest  attainable  knowledge  of 
the  facts.  Every  careful  student  of  Germany  knew 
that,  when  the  German  morale  yielded,  it  would 
collapse  utterly  and  at  once;  and  even  those  who 

78 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

knew  too  little  of  Germany  to  have  been  on  the 
look-out  for  this  beforehand  could  have  read  it 
for  themselves  in  the  German  Press.  It  would, 
perhaps,  be  well  to  give  one  reference.  Professor 
Delbriick's  war-diary  for  September,  1918,  published 
in  the  Preussische  Jahrhilcher  for  October,  is  a  tragic 
and  almost  classical  instance  of  the  way  in  which 
the  German  mind  reacts  to  outer  circumstance,  and 
hastens  to  readapt  its  whole  philosophy  of  life 
and  history  accordingly.  Within  a  day  of  the  Bul- 
garian collapse  he  had  admitted  the  bankruptcy  of 
the  Machtpolitik,  which  he  had  been  upholding  and 
teaching  throughout  his  long  career,  and  was  turn- 
ing his  mind  seriously  and  respectfully  to  Anglo- 
Saxon  political  ideas  and  to  the  possibilities  of  a 
League  of  Nations. 

Let  us  briefly  recall  the  situation  with  which  the 
Allied  statesmen  were  faced  in  October,  1918. 

The  world,  as  we  have  seen,  was  divided  into  two 
great  systems  of  economic  organization,  the  one 
oceanic,  and  in  control  of  the  world's  chief  sources 
of  industrial  raw  material  and  of  food-supply,  the 
other  European.  The  Ocean  had  now  definitely 
defeated  the  Continent;  the  besiegers  had  won  the 
day.  With  the  collapse  of  the  German  military 
power  and  its  supersession  by  civil  governments, 
now  no  longer  five,  but  (counting  the  Baltic  states) 
likely  to  become  well-nigh  a  dozen  in  Europe  alone, 

79 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

the  organization  which,  Hke  a  steel  corset,  had  held 
Europe  together  for  the  last  four  years,  which  had 
provided  employment,  transport,  food,  and  finance 
for  its  hard-ridden  populations,  was  destined  to 
disappear.  Europe,  "from  the  Rhine  to  the  Volga," 
to  quote  from  a  memorandum  written  at  the  time, 
was  in  solution.  It  was  not  a  question  now  of  auto- 
cratic as  against  popular  government;  it  was  a 
question  of  government  against  anarchy.  From  one 
moment  to  the  next  every  responsible  student  of 
public  affairs,  outside  the  ranks  of  the  professed 
revolutionaries,  however  red  his  previous  affiliations 
may  have  been,  was  turned  perforce  into  a  Conser- 
vative. The  one  urgent  question  was  to  get  Europe 
back  to  work. 

This  involved  innumerable  difficulties  of  detail. 
The  chief,  perhaps,  was  the  problem  of  demobiliza- 
tion. How  was  the  German  army,  consisting  in 
large  part  of  industrial  workers,  to  be  demobilized 
into  a  society  which  was  as  yet  wholly  unable  to 
absorb  them?  The  Austro-Hungarian  army  was 
faced  with  an  even  more  urgent  problem.  It  could 
not  be  demobilized  because  there  was  no  authority  to 
send  it  home.  The  collapse  of  the  Dual  Monarchy 
involved  the  vanishing  of  the  War  Office.  In  the 
event,  the  men  mostly  found  their  way  home  them- 
selves, not  without  violence  and  larceny.  The  first 
War   Minister   of   the   new    Austrian   Republic,   a 

80 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

Socialist,  Dr.  Julius  Deutsch,  has  written  an  in- 
teresting account  of  how  he  took  up  his  quarters  in 
the  old  Habsburg  War  Ministry,  and  set  to  work 
manfully  to  bring  order  out  of  chaos.  Noskc,  the 
German  Majority  Socialist,  has  written  a  similar 
story  of  his  experience  as  first  War  Minister  of  the 
German  Republic.  Others  no  doubt  could  tell  the 
same  tale  for  Czecho-Slovakia,  Poland,  Jugo-Slavia, 
and  Roumania.  But  behind  all  these  and  other  de- 
tailed problems  was  the  master-question  of  setting 
the  wheels  of  production — of  normal  production  for 
peace  purposes — revolving  once  more. 

It  was  a  vast  and  menacing,  but  not  wholly  im- 
practicable, task,  for  men's  minds  were  ripe  for  its 
solution.  Never  was  public  opinion  so  plastic,  so 
ready  to  respond  to  a  lead,  so  eagerly  expectant,  as 
during  those  weeks  or  months.  The  Allied  govern- 
ments had  thrown  propaganda  like  bread  upon  the 
waters,  and  it  was  coming  back  after  many  days  in 
the  shape  of  a  pathetic  and  unreasoning  confidence 
in  the  integrity,  the  goodness,  the  unselfishness,  and 
the  practical  energy  of  the  Allied — and  especially 
the  English-speaking — governments.  The  long- 
submerged  stream  of  Liberal  idealism  welled  up 
suddenly  to  the  surface,  and,  for  the  time  at  least, 
it  swept  all  before  it.  Reason,  feeling,  and,  in  the 
case  of  the  enemy  peoples  at  any  rate,  a  strong  dash 
of  self-interest,  made  the  spokesman  of  the  Allies 
5  8i 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

the  hero  of  the  day.     Faced  with  the  bankruptcy  of 
the  old  authority,  and  not  habituated  as  yet  to  the 
new.    simple    men    and    women    throughout    the 
blockaded    area    looked    vaguely    to    some    super- 
national     government,     to     the     much-advertised 
League  of  Nations,  to  help  them  through  the  crisis. 
Nor  was  their  confidence  so  foolish  or  ill-placed  as 
it  seems  now  to  many  of  them  after  the  event.     It 
is  true  that  the  League  of  Nations  existed  as  yet 
only  in  the  imagination  of  its  author,  and  that,  even 
when  it  assumed  concrete  shape,  it  was  not  a  super- 
national  government,  and  exercised  no  control  over 
raw  materials  and  food  supplies.     But  in  October, 
1918,  a  super- government,  or  something  very  like 
it,  was  actually  in  existence,   and  plans  had  been 
made,  and  could  have  been  put  into  effect  without 
surpassing  difficulty,  for  meeting  the  very  problems 
which  men  looked  to  the  League  of  Nations  to  solve. 
The  oceanic,  like  the  continental  system,  had  per- 
fected its  economic  organization.    In  October,  1918, 
it  stood,  compact  and  victorious,  at  the  zenith  of 
its    efficiency.      Inter-Allied    Committees,    working 
under  the  authority  of  the  Supreme  War  Council, 
were  exercising  a  control  over  the  whole,   or  the 
greater  part,   of  the   extra-continental   supplies   of 
wheat,    sugar,    meats    and    fats,    oil    and    oilseeds, 
copper,  tin,  nitrate  of  soda,   rubber,  wool,  cotton, 
jute,  hemp  and  flax,   leather,  timber,   coal,   paper, 

82 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

petroleum,  and  tobacco,  together  with  nearly  all  the 
Allied  and  a  large  block  of  neutral  shipping,  which, 
owing  to  the  submarine,  was  the  narrow^  neck  of 
the  bottle  regulating  the  volume  and  destination  of 
every  sea-borne  commodity.  What  expedient  could 
be  more  practical,  and  indeed  more  logical,  than 
that  the  victorious  system  should  recognize  its  re- 
sponsibility towards  the  tasks  of  its  defeated  rival, 
annex,  as  it  were,  the  continental  area  to  its  domain, 
and  so  once  more  reknit  the  economic  unity  which 
the  war  had  sundered?  And  what  happier  means 
could  be  devised  for  the  promotion  of  the  ideal  of 
international  co-operation  of  which  the  League  of 
Nations  was  to  be  the  lasting  embodiment?  It  is 
not  given  to  peoples,  except  for  the  briefest  of  spells, 
to  live  by  faith  alone.  Europe  indeed  had  a  visible 
demonstration  of  the  spirit  and  methods  of  the  new 
order  which  had  been  preached  from  Washington. 
By  their  handling  of  the  urgent  problem  of  Europe's 
economic  need  the  President  and  his  message  would 
be  judged. 

We  can  now  take  up  once  more  the  thread  of 
events. 

In  the  first  week  of  October  the  new  German 
Government,  as  was  expected,  decided  to  abandon 
the  German  war-aims  en  bloc,  and  to  accede  to  those 
of  the  Allies.  The  natural  mode  of  doing  so  would 
have  been  to  approach  the  Supreme  War  Council 

83 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

or  the  Allied  governments  individually,  with  a  re- 
quest for  negotiations  upon  the  terms  and  principles 
so  repeatedly  proclaimed  by  their  statesmen.     But, 
with  a  clumsy  attempt  at  astuteness,  which  proved, 
in  the  event,  to  be  the  height  of  folly,  instead  of 
approaching  the  Allies  as  a  whole  with  a  request 
for    peace,    the    German    Government    approached 
President  Wilson  alone  with  a  request  for  an  armis- 
tice.    Its  motive  in  approaching  President  Wilson 
was   plain   enough.      Notwithstanding   the   general 
acceptance  of   his   ideas  and  policy   by   the   Allied 
statesmen,  notably  by  Mr.  Lloyd  George  in  a  speech 
to  the  American  troops  in  the  summer,  the  Presi- 
dent's own  statements  had  been  more  explicit,  es- 
pecially on  the  all-important  economic  issue,  than 
those  of  any  of  his  confederates.    The  third  of  his 
Fourteen  Points  stipulated   for  "equality  of  trade 
conditions"  between  the  parties  to  the  peace,  and 
only  a  few  days  before,  on  September  2^,  he  had 
made  a  speech  in  strong  condemnation  of  "selfish 
economic  leagues,"  of  which  the  oceanic  combina- 
tion, in  German  eyes,  was  a  potential  embodiment. 
Moreover,  the  President  had  nowhere  in  his  speeches 
laid  particular  stress  on  the  reparation  due  by  the  ag- 
gressors in  the  war  for  the  damage  caused  by  their 
invasion  of  Allied  territory.     It  might,  therefore, 
seem  to  a  German  statesman,   faced  with  a  choice 
of  methods  of  surrender,  that  better  terms  might  be 

84 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

secured  from  the  President  than  from  Britain, 
France,  and  Italy.  After  all,  the  President's  original 
ambition,  only  frustrated  by  the  declaration  of  the 
unlimited  submarine  war  less  than  two  years  before, 
had  been  to  act  as  a  mediator.  Why  should  he  not 
once  more  assume  the  same  role?  Nevertheless  the 
choice  of  the  President  proved  a  grave  blunder,  for 
the  Woodrow  Wilson  of  October,  191 8,  was  no 
longer  the  man  of  December,  191 6;  still  less  was 
the  American  public  the  same  as  it  was  before  the 
wave  of  enthusiasm  and  of  sustained  effort  and 
expectation  which  had  followed  America's  entry  into 
the  war.  Moreover,  it  indicated  a  distrust  of  the 
Allied  statesmen  and  their  peoples  which  augured 
ill  for  the  future. 

Still  more  disastrous  was  the  decision  to  ask  for 
an  armistice.  The  request  was  indeed  made 
contrary  to  the  better  judgment  of  the  Chancellor. 
It  was  due  to  the  insistence  of  Ludendorff,  who 
thought  himself  faced  in  the  early  days  of  October 
with  an  imminent  military  debacle  in  the  West, 
and  wished  at  all  costs  to  save  the  reputation  of 
the  system  which  he  embodied — for  reasons  which 
have  become  more  apparent  in  the  recent  develop- 
ments of  German  politics.  With  deplorable  weak- 
ness the  Chancellor  allowed  himself  to  be  overruled. 
In  the  event,  it  was  some  forty  days  before  the 
armistice  was  secured — time  enough  for  the  expected 

85 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

debacle  to  have  occurred,  or,  alternatively,  for  a 
preliminary  peace  to  have  been  negotiated.  In  the 
interval  the  Field-Marshal  realized  that  he  had  lost 
his  nerve  and  had  exaggerated  the  imminence  of 
what  remained,  indeed,  a  real  peril.  But  by  that  time 
his  government  was  well  launched  on  the  wrong 
track. 

It  had  never  been  expected  that  the  war  would 
end  in  an  armistice.  An  armistice  signifies  a 
temporary  cessation  of  fighting,  under  conditions 
allowing  for  its  resumption  should  negotiations 
break  down — as  happened,  for  instance,  between 
the  Balkan  league  and  the  Turks  in  191 3.  It  was 
obvious  that  the  industrial  developments  of  modern 
warfare  made  such  a  procedure  impossible  in  this 
case.  The  vast  stream  of  munitions  and  of  the 
other  elements  of  war-production  could  no  more 
be  turned  off  and  on  again  from  one  day  to  the  next 
than  a  Niagara.  If  war-production,  together  with 
the  myriad  arrangements  dependent  upon  it,  ceased, 
it  would  be  well-nigh  impossible  to  resume  it.  If 
it  continued,  the  iron  stream  would  accumulate  until 
it  rapidly  overflowed  all  possible  means  for 
containing  it.  Any  cessation  of  hostilities,  then, 
by  whatever  name  it  were  called,  must,  for  strictly 
practical  reasons,  be  final.  It  had,  therefore,  been 
expected  that  the  war  would  end  with  the  conclusion 
of  a  preliminary  peace,  brought  about,  as  in  1814 

86 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

and  1 87 1,  after  a  few  weeks'  negotiation  during  the 
actual  continuance  of  hostilities,  and  hastened  by 
the  desire  on  both  sides  to  save  life.  When  Germany, 
however,  contrary  to  these  precedents,  asked  first 
for  an  armistice,  she  forced  the  Allies  to  draw  up 
terms  so  stringent  as  to  render  her  resumption  of 
hostilities  impossible.  It  was  for  this  reason  that 
the  condition  drawn  up  by  the  Allied  military  and 
naval  authorities  involved  extensive  measures 
of  military  disarmament  and  occupation,  and 
the  continuance  of  the  blockade,  which  was  then 
actually,  as  it  still  is  potentially,  the  most  powerful 
instrument  of  control  over  the  military  system  of 
Germany.  In  this  connection  it  should  be  remem- 
bered that  it  was  not  till  November  29  that  the 
German  submarines  operating  in  the  Mediterranean 
returned  to  their  home  ports.  The  armistice  may 
have  contributed  somewhat,  in  unimaginative  eyes, 
to  save  the  prestige  of  the  German  army,  if  not  of 
the  German  navy;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  thus 
entailed  the  continuance,  for  the  time  being,  of 
war-time  conditions,  and  left  the  German  govern- 
ment powerless,  in  the  relaxation  of  the  Allies'  sense 
of  urgency,  to  hasten  the  conclusion  of  peace. 
Moreover,  since  an  armistice  is  primarily  a  military 
and  naval  matter,  it  gave  the  soldiers  and  sailors 
a  predominance  in  what  were,  in  effect,  partly 
peace   discussions,   to   which   the   state   of   Europe 

87 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

as  it  then  was,  and,  still  more,  as  it  was  becoming, 
little  entitled  them.  Thus  it  was  that,  whether 
through  inadvertence  or  pedantry,  the  strong 
recommendation  made  by  the  representative  of 
the  Allied  Maritime  Transport  Council,  that  a 
provision  should  be  included  for  the  delivery  of 
the  German  and  Austrian  merchant  vessels  and 
their  control  by  the  Council,  was  rejected,  thus 
delaying  for  nearly  four  months  the  utilization  of 
nearly  a  million  tons  of  shipping  at  a  time  when 
Europe  was  crying  out  for  sea-borne  commodities. 
Little  did  the  Chancellor  think,  when  he  yielded  to 
LudendorfT's  appeal  in  the  first  week  of  October, 
1918,  that  he  was  thereby  delaying  the  conclusion 
of  peace,  the  return  of  the  German  prisoners,  and 
the  resumption  of  commercial  and  diplomatic  rela- 
tions between  Germany  and  her  enemies  till  January, 
1920,  and,  indeed,  in  the  case  of  the  United  States, 
till  November,  1921. 

October  was  occupied,  on  the  diplomatic  stage,  by 
a  correspondence  between  the  President  and  the 
German  government,  culminating  in  a  virtual 
demand  by  the  former  for  the  abdication  of  the 
Kaiser  and  an  implied  promise  of  better  terms  if  it 
occurred.  The  Allies,  who  were,  for  the  moment, 
out  of  the  play,  followed  it  with  bated  breath,  not 
realizing  the  mischief  that  was  in  the  making.  For 
the  President,  had  he  only  known  it,  was  undermin- 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

ing  the  very  foundations  of  his  own  Liberal  pro- 
gramme, and  imperilHng  the  hope  of  its  reaHzation 
in  Central  Europe.  By  appearing  to  cast  the  blame 
for  the  crime  of  the  war  upon  the  Kaiser  and  the 
small  group  of  his  governing  circle,  he  encouraged 
the  German  people  in  the  fatal  belief — still  one  of 
the  main  obstacles  to  the  peace  of  Europe — that 
there  is  any  essential  difference  in  public  affairs,  and 
among  a  civilized  and  instructed  people,  between 
sins  of  commission  and  of  omission,  and  that  those 
who  had  allowed  themselves  to  be  used  as  the  willing 
and,  indeed,  enthusiastic  instruments  of  an  ir- 
responsible and  unscrupulous  ruler,  and  had  been 
ready  to  profit  by  his  successes,  could  acquit  them- 
selves of  their  responsibility  by  driving  him  into  the 
wilderness  as  a  scapegoat.  Moreover,  and  what  was 
under  the  immediate  circumstances  even  worse,  by 
asking  the  German  people  to  effect  a  change  not 
provided  for  in  their  constitution  he  was  striking 
a  blow  at  the  system  of  limited  and  constitutional 
monarchy  which  had  now^  actually  been  inaugurated 
and  opening  the  door  to  revolution  at  the  very 
moment  when  it  was  the  duty  of  every  good  Euro- 
pean, and  of  all  who  cared  for  Europe's  welfare,  to 
promote  stability  and  conservatism.  The  President 
did  indeed  succeed,  by  his  academic  thunders,  in  driv- 
ing the  Kaiser  into  exile  and  bringing  a  German 
Republic  into  existence,  but  at  what  a  cost!     The 

89 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

figurehead  was  changed,  but,  as  was  inevitable,  the 
administrative  and  judicial  personnel  remained. 
The  new  regime,  insecurely,  because  hastily, 
established  within  the  framework  of  the  old  order, 
had  to  face  the  whole  odium  of  defeat,  and  of  the 
economic  disasters  which  followed  it.  Worst  of  all, 
the  German  people,  having  been  led  to  believe  that 
they  could  dissociate  their  own  behaviour  from  that 
of  their  rulers,  were  given,  if  not  a  legitimate,  at 
least  a  natural  and  very  human  ground  of  griev- 
ance, when  they  discovered  that  the  day  of  judg- 
ment still  lay  before  and  not  behind  them. 

Meanwhile,  during  the  forty  days'  correspondence, 
Ludendorff's  empire  fell  into  liquidation.  On 
October  21  the  German-Austrian  deputies  met  alone 
for  the  first  time.  By  the  end  of  the  month  Czecho- 
slovakia and  Jugo-Slavia  were  in  being.  Poland 
followed  a  few  days  later.  In  the  Baltic  provinces 
the  Red  Army  of  Russia  was  eagerly  awaiting  the 
German  retreat.  But  the  Continent  was  still  cut 
off  from  the  Ocean,  and  the  inter- Allied  organization 
was  still  making  plans,  as  it  was  bound  to  do,  for 
the  continuance  of  the  war  into  the  next  summer. 

When  the  President  had  brought  his  argument 
with  the  Germans  to  what  he  deemed  a  satisfactory 
conclusion  he  transmitted  their  request  for  an  armis- 
tice to  the  Allied  governments.  He  informed  them 
at  the  same  time  that  the  German  people  were  pre- 

90 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

pared  to  make  peace  "upon  the  terms  and  principles 
set  forth"  in  his  "address  of  January  8,  1918"  (the 
so-called  Fourteen  Points  speech),  "and  subsequent 
addresses,"  including,  of  course,  the  address  of  Sep- 
tember 27,  and  enquired  whether  they  were  prepared 
to  accept  the  same  basis  for  detailed  negotiations. 

The  Supreme  Council  met  on  October  31,  and  on 
the  1st,  2nd,  and  4th  of  November,  to  consider  his 
communication.  The  minutes  of  these  momentous 
meetings  had,  of  course,  not  been  made  public, 
but,  from  the  accounts  given  by  M.  Tardieu  and 
others,  it  would  seem  that  the  discussion  of  the  de- 
tails of  the  armistice,  which  was,  after  all,  the 
most  urgent  matter,  took  up  the  bulk  of  the  time. 
Whether  the  addresses  of  the  President  were  ever 
considered  in  detail,  and  subjected  to  an  analysis  of 
their  vague  and  sometimes  inconsistent  phraseology, 
we  have  as  yet  no  official  means  of  knowing.  It 
may,  however,  be  conjectured  that  the  President's 
representative,  Colonel  House,  considered  that  the 
United  States  should  cease  hostilities  upon  this 
basis,  whether  the  Allies  accepted  it  or  not.  How- 
ever this  may  be,  Britain,  France,  and  Italy  decided 
to  signify  their  adherence  to  the  President's  "terms 
and  principles"  with  three  reservations.  In  the 
first  place,  Britain,  followed  by  the  other  Allies, 
struck  out  the  clause  relating  to  the  freedom  of 
the  seas.     In  the  second,  again,  it  appears,  on  the 

91 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

British  initiative,  the  President's  references  to 
reparation  were  accentuated  and  re-stated  in  the 
following  formula:  "Compensation  shall  be  paid 
for  all  damage  done  to  the  civilian  population  of 
the  Allies  and  their  property  by  the  aggression  of 
Germany  by  land,  by  sea,  and  by  air."  Finally,  the 
Italian  representatives  secured  the  placing  on  record 
of  a  statement  that  they  did  not  regard  the  basis 
thus  accepted  for  peace  with  Germany  as  governing 
the  future  settlement  with  Austria-Hungary.  On 
November  5  the  President  informed  the  German 
government,  through  the  Swiss  Minister  at  Wash- 
ington, that  the  Allied  governments  had  accepted 
his  proposed  basis,  with  the  two  reservations 
mentioned.  The  Italian  reservation,  as  not  affecting 
Germany,  was  not  included  in  his  communication, 
and,  for  some  reason  not  hitherto  disclosed,  but 
surely  little  creditable  to  the  Allied  governments,  it 
was  not  published  separately,  and  only  became 
known  during  the  Fiume  controversy  some  months 
later.  On  November  1 1  the  German  plenipoten- 
tiaries signed  the  armistice,  practically  on  the  terms 
submitted  them  by  Marshal  Foch,  with  an  additional 
clause,  due  to  the  insistence  of  Herr  Erzberger, 
stipulating  that  the  Allies  contemplated  the  revictual- 
ling  of  Germany,  but  without  providing  for  the 
shipping  which  would  be  required  if  others  were 
not  to  go  short  to  meet  the  German  need. 

92 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

Let  us  pause  to  survey  the  political  situation  at 
which  we  have  arrived. 

The  AlHed  and  enemy  governments  were  now 
bound  by  two  engagements.  The  first,  in  time  as 
in  importance,  was  the  mutual  pledge  to  conclude 
peace  upon  the  terms  and  principles  set  forth  in  the 
President's  addresses.  This  pledge,  offered  by  the 
Germans  on  October  5,  had  been  accepted  by  the 
Allies  with  certain  reservations,  in  a  communica- 
tion dated  November  4  and  published  three  days 
later.^  It  is  therefore  generally  known  as  the 
Pre-Armistice  Agreement  of  November  4.  The 
question  has  since  been  raised  as  to  whether  this 
mutual  pledge,  made  by  correspondence,  constituted 
a  binding  international  agreement.  Without  going 
into  technicalities,  the  point  may  be  briefly  answered. 
In  the  first  place  it  was  regarded  as  so  binding  by 
the  parties,  and  by  the  Press  and  public  men,  in  their 
comments ;  at  the  time  the  vigorous  protest  made  by 
the  Australian  Premier  against  the  "bond"  signed,  as 
he  complained,  behind  his  back,  may  be  recalled  in 
particular;  and  it  was  on  the  strength  of  this 
interpretation  that  the  German  government  author- 
ized its  plenipotentiaries  to  sign  the  armistice  by 
which  it  engaged  to  disband  its  forces.  In  the 
second  place  it  was  expressly  stated  to  be  so  binding 
by    the    Allied    governments    on    several    occasions 

'  See  Appendix  I. 

93 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

during  subsequent  negotiations,  particularly  in  the 
covering  letter  accompanying  the  final  terms  sub- 
mitted to  the  German  Peace  Delegation  in  June, 
1919/  The  agreement,  then,  must  be  regarded  as 
being  as  solemn  and  as  formal  as  any  pact,  like 
the  Belgian  Treaty  of  1839,  signed  in  due  and 
proper  form  by  plenipotentiaries  round  a  table. 
And  if  there  was  one  portion  of  it  more  binding 
than  another  it  was  the  clause  which  the  Allies 
drew  up  of  their  own  motion,  in  order,  as  they  said, 
that  no  misunderstanding  might  arise  on  the  ques- 
tion of  reparations.  The  wording  of  that  clause, 
which  has  already  been  quoted,  made  it  perfectly 
clear,  both  to  the  lay  mind  and  to  those  who  were 
familiar  with  the  technical  discussions,  that  the 
Allies  demanded  only  the  payments  due  for  damages 
suffered  during  the  war  by  their  civilian  citizens,  and 
renounced  the  request  for  an  indemnity,  on  the 
1 87 1  model,  for  the  cost  of  the  military  and  naval 
operations  themselves.  The  wisdom  of  such  a 
renunciation,  in  view  of  the  origin  of  the  war,  and 
of  the  crippling  cost  of  such  items  as  pensions  and 
separation  allowances,  particularly  to  invaded  states 
like  France,  Belgium,  Serbia,  and  Italy,  may  be 
disputed.  But  as  to  the  fact  that  it  was  made  there 
can  be  no  dispute.  The  Times,  in  its  editorial  of 
November    7,    whilst    not    criticizing    the    policy 

*  See  Appendix  II. 

94 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

adopted,  characterized  it  as  "an  unusual  concession 
to  defeated  enemies." 

It  may  be  asked  why,  then,  has  so  Httle  been 
heard  among  the  AlHed,  and  especially  the  British 
public,  of  the  agreement  of  November  4,  and  why 
is  it  still  so  widely  believed  that  the  war  ended  in 
an  unconditional  German  surrender?  The  answer 
is  not  creditable,  but  neither  is  it  far  to  seek.  It 
is  because  the  Allies,  and  again  especially  the  British 
government,  took  no  steps  whatever  to  enlighten 
the  public  as  to  the  true  nature  of  the  diplomatic 
situation.  Whether  out  of  embarrassment  or  pre- 
occupation, the  agreement  was  passed  over  in  silence. 
The  writer  cannot  recall  a  single  instance  during  the 
last  three  years  in  which  the  British  Premier,  or 
the  British  Foreign  Secretary,  whose  joint  duty  it 
is  to  keep  the  public  abreast  of  important  develop- 
ments in  our  foreign  policy,  have  made  clear  from 
the  platform  the  real  nature  of  the  obligations 
assumed  by  us  before  the  armistice  to  the  enemy 
governments  and  peoples. 

There  is  a  further  aspect  of  the  agreement  of 
November  4  which  has  also  been  ignored.  President 
Wilson's  speeches  ranged  over  a  wide  area,  and  the 
acceptance  of  the  policies  outlined  in  them  covered 
a  number  of  points  already  dealt  with,  in  treaties 
concluded  during  the  war — treaties  which  have  been 
much  criticized  for  their  perhaps  excusable  secrecy, 

95 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

but  are  in  some  cases  more  open  to  attack  for  their 
substance.  The  Italian  government,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  had  the  foresight  to  think  out  the 
impHcations  involved  in  the  Wilson  policy,  and  to 
keep  its  hands  free  within  the  sphere  of  its  own 
special  interests.  But  the  very  fact  of  this  Italian 
reservation  was  a  vigorous  reminder  that  the 
Wilson  policy  so  publicly  adopted,  and  at  so  solemn 
a  moment,  was  incompatible  with  certain  other 
precedent  obligations,  and  therefore  necessarily, 
under  the  circumstances,  superseded  them.  Since 
not  all,  but  only  the  leading  Allied  Powers,  were 
represented  at  the  Supreme  Council  at  which  the 
new  policy  was  adopted,  formal  notice  should  per- 
haps have  been  sent  to  Serbia,  Greece,  and  other 
Allied  states  whose  interests  were  thereby  affected. 
The  public,  at  any  rate,  which  was  told  of  the 
acceptance  of  the  Wilson  policy,  naturally  concluded 
that  its  implications  were  being  worked  out  (which 
was  indeed  the  case,  so  far  as  the  experts  were  con- 
cerned), and  would  duly  be  embodied  in  the  treaties. 
Had  it  known  of  the  Italian  reservation  regarding 
the  Austro-Hungarian  peace  it  would  only  have 
been  confirmed  in  what,  to  the  lay  mind,  seemed  the 
only  natural  and  practical  view,  that  the  acceptance 
of  Wilson  principles  as  governing  the  peace  with 
Germany  involved  also  their  acceptance  for  the 
settlement     with     Bulgaria,     Turkey,     and     (with 

96 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

allowance  for  the  Italian  reservation)  Austria- 
Hungary.  For  was  not  the  homogeneity  of  the 
settlement  one  of  the  very  principles  laid  down  in 
the  President's  addresses? 

Why  the  President  did  not  drive  home  this  simple 
logic  to  the  Allied  statesmen  in  a  brief  final  com- 
munication is  still  an  unexplained  mystery.  It  is 
true  that  there  were  some  of  the  secret  engagements 
of  which  the  President  knew  nothing  till  he  reached 
Paris;  but  there  were  others,  such  as  the  Treaty 
of  London,  which  had  been  widely  published  and 
the  authenticity  of  which  was  known  by  most  well- 
informed  European  students  of  affairs.  Here  was 
a  grave  and  fatal  fault  of  omission,  which  proved 
a  seed  of  endless  mischief. 

The  second  binding  agreement  was  the  armistice 
itself.  This  was  a  document  concerned,  not  with 
the  peace  settlement  itself,  but  with  the  military  and 
naval  arrangements  precedent  to  its  negotiation. 
We  have  already  seen  that  its  negotiators,  holding 
even  too  limited  a  view  of  its  technical  character, 
had  rejected  a  provision  which  their  economic 
advisers  regarded  as  indispensable  on  more  general 
grounds. 

But  there  was  a  further  and  more  ominous  factor 
in  the  situation  on  the  morning  when  the  armistice 
was  signed.  Both  the  governments  which  were  pri- 
marily responsible  for  it  no  longer  retained  the 
7  97 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

confidence  of  their  peoples.  On  Saturday,  Novem- 
ber 9,  when  the  German  plenipotentiaries  were 
already  on  enemy  soil,  the  explosion  for  which  the 
President,  whether  consciously  or  not,  had  been 
laying  the  train  took  place  in  Berlin.  Prince  Max 
of  Baden  resigned,  to  be  replaced,  for  the  time 
being,  by  a  provisional  government  of  Socialist 
Commissaries  {Volksheauftragte).  The  Kaiser  fled 
from  Spa  into  Holland,  and  the  minor  German 
sovereigns  and  princes  abdicated  en  masse.  Mean- 
while, on  November  5,  on  the  very  day  on  Avhich 
he  forwarded  to  the  German  government  the  Allies' 
acceptance  of  his  principles  and  policy,  the  result 
of  the  biennial  Congressional  elections  showed  that 
the  President,  who  had  appealed  to  the  people  on  a 
party  issue,  would  no  longer  command  a  majority 
in  the  legislature  and  joint  treaty-making  body. 
His  own  people  had  turned  against  the  preacher  at 
the  moment  of  his  greatest  triumph  abroad.  Here, 
indeed,  fate  was  weaving  the  matter  for  a  confused 
and  tragic  denouement.  "They  are  ringing  their 
bells,"  remarked  one  who  knew  both  Europe  and 
America  to  the  writer  on  the  morning  of  November 
II,  "They  will  be  wringing  their  hands  soon." 
Pitt's  sombre  jest  soon  found  fulfilment. 


98 


CHAPTER  III 

FROM  NOVEMBER  II,   I918,  TO  THE  OPENING  OF  THE 
PEACE  CONFERENCE 

/^N  the  morning  of  November  ii  the  writer  was 
^-^  one  of  those  who  stood  at  a  Foreign  Office 
window  and  watched  Mr.  Lloyd  George  at  his  door 
in  Downing  Street  across  the  road,  receiving  the 
congratulations  of  the  small  crowd  that  had  gathered 
at  the  news  of  the  armistice.  To  the  man  in  the 
street  the  Premier  was  the  symbol  of  victory,  and 
of  the  long  effort  now  ended  at  last.  But  the  men 
at  the  upper  windows  were  looking,  not  back,  but 
forward.  His  power  they  knew,  and  his  energy, 
and  his  capacity  for  repairing  what  had  been  up  to 
two  years  before  an  almost  complete  ignorance  of 
Europe.  Would  he  who  now  symbolized  victory 
have  the  vision  and  the  courage  and  the  humility 
to  become  also  Europe's  chief  artificer  of  peace  and 
justice?  For  it  was  plain  that,  in  the  complex  and 
difficult  tasks  that  lay  ahead,  the  chief  responsibility 
would  fall  upon  Britain.     France,  who  had  borne 

99 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

the  main  and,  for  well-nigh  two  years,  almost  the 
whole  brunt  of  the  military  effort,  was  unnerved  and 
exhausted.  America  was  new  to  European  prob- 
lems. If  Britain  rose  to  the  height  of  a  great 
opportunity,  she  could  dominate  the  coming  con- 
ference by  her  combination  of  ripe  experience  and 
unselfish  detachment,  and  act  as  the  interpreter  of 
the  wiser  mind  of  America  to  an  expectant  Europe. 
On  the  afternoon  of  the  same  day  chance  brought 
the  writer  into  contact  with  one  who  had  come 
fresh  from  converse  with  the  Premier.  What  he 
told  was  stunning,  and  what  was  even  more  stunning 
was  the  impression  he  conveyed  of  the  atmosphere 
that  he  had  just  left.  The  Premier,  so  he  said, 
was  making  ready  for  a  General  Election.  This 
was  not  startling  news  in  itself,  although  at  such 
a  moment,  with  Europe  adrift  and  rudderless,  it 
seemed  a  somewhat  parochial  preoccupation.  Par- 
liament was  stale,  the  suffrage  had  been  extended, 
and  a  General  Election  with  a  limited  mandate  to 
strengthen  a  government  which  was  then  still  a 
coalition  of  three  out  of  the  four  parliamentary 
parties,  in  the  coming  tasks  of  negotiation  and  re- 
construction was  no  unreasonable  expedient.  But 
this  was  not,  it  appeared,  what  was  projected.  The 
Premier  intended  to  stiffen  the  ranks  of  his  sup- 
porters, to  organize  what  would,  despite  its  name, 
be  a  new  government  party,  and  to  appeal  to  the 

loo 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

electors  for  a  full  five  years'  measure  of  confidence 
— in  brief,  to  fight  what  would  inevitably  degener- 
ate into  a  khaki  election.  Before  the  week  was  out 
the  news  was  public  property.  On  Saturday, 
November  i6,  within  five  days  of  the  armistice, 
the  Premier  had  appeared  at  an  old-style  political 
gathering,  with  a  duke  in  the  chair,  and  had  inaugu- 
rated the  most  momentous  election  campaign  in  the 
whole  record  of  the  British  Parliament. 

Let  us  pause  for  a  moment  to  consider  what  a 
British  Premier,  at  such  a  moment,  might  have  told 
his  fellow-countrymen.  He  could  have  begun  by 
emphasizing  the  completeness  of  the  victory,  and 
the  part  played  by  British  sea-power  and  British 
arms  in  securing  it.  He  could  have  made  them 
realize,  what  it  was  hard  at  such  a  moment,  and  after 
such  an  effort,  for  an  unimaginative  people  like  the 
English  to  take  in,  that  Prussian  militarism  lay  in 
very  truth  in  the  dust,  and  that  a  new  era  was  dawn- 
ing for  Central  and  South-Eastern  Europe.  He 
could  have  told  them  of  the  many  peoples,  some  of 
them  ex-enemies,  but  some  of  them — the  greater 
number — natural  friends  and  allies,  who  were  now  at 
length  delivered  from  the  yoke  of  Ludendorff's 
dominion.  With  the  picturesque  touch  of  which 
he  is  so  inimitable  a  master  he  could  have  given  the 
Bohemian  and  the  Slovak,  the  Serb,  the  Croat, 
and  the  Slovene,  the  Pole,  the  Ruthene,  and  even 

lOI 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

the  Magyar,  not  to  speak  of  the  nations  of  the 
Caucasus,  Nearer  Asia,  and  Syria,  at  least  some 
faint  shadow  of  reaHty  for  the  British  people.  All 
these,  he  could  have  told  them,  were  now  liberated, 
expectant,  and  looking  to  Britain — the  embodiment 
of  the  ripest  political  wisdom  in  the  modern  world 
— to  help  them  through  this  crisis  in  their  national 
life.  He  could  have  made  them  feel  that  they  were 
living  through  one  of  those  crucial  and  plastic 
moments  of  history  which  decide  the  fate  of  vast 
territories  for  many  generations  of  men  and  women, 
and  that  it  was  to  Britain  that  these  looked,  and 
looked  with  a  naive,  ardent,  and  unquestioning  hope, 
all  the  greater  because  of  the  respect  inspired  in  those 
of  them  who  had  encountered  the  British  soldier 
or  individual  representatives  of  the  British  name, 
to  set  them  on  the  road  to  liberty,  justice,  and 
prosperity.  Would  Britain  rise  to  the  height  of 
what  men  asked  of  her?  That,  he  could  have  pub- 
lished throughout  the  land,  was  the  question  which 
was  to  be  decided  at  the  polls.  The  war  had  ended  a 
full  six  months  earlier  than  the  public  had  expected. 
We  had,  so  to  speak,  six  months'  fighting  power 
and  six  months'  finance  in  hand.  He  did  not  ask 
the  British  people  to  sacrifice  a  single  life  on  the 
tasks  of  European  reconstruction.  All  he  asked 
was  that  the  men  now  under  arms,  or  a  sufficient 
proportion  of  them  returning  to  the  colours  after 

102 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

a  short  leave  to  see  their  families,  should  undertake 
to  serve  on  police  duty  on  behalf  of  weaker  nations 
faced  with  the  task,  at  a  moment's  notice,  of  or- 
ganizing a  government  out  of  chaos;  and  that 
British  credit  should  be  mobilized,  together  with 
the  credit  of  the  United  States,  of  France,  Italy, 
and  Japan,  and  he  ventured  to  hope,  of  neutral 
peoples,  such  as  Norway,  Sweden,  Denmark,  Hol- 
land, and  Switzerland,  if  they,  too,  felt  any  respon- 
sibility towards  their  less  fortunate  neighbours,  in 
a  combined  international  credit  scheme  for  restoring 
the  productive  power  of  an  impoverished  Continent. 
Then  he  could  have  spoken  to  them  of  the  League 
of  Nations.  He  could  have  explained  to  them  that, 
between  nations  as  between  classes,  there  is  no  true 
relationship  of  co-operation,  still  less  of  fraternity, 
between  the  rich  and  the  destitute.  He  could  have 
made  them  see,  he  of  all  men,  with  his  unerring 
power  of  making  a  telling  point,  that  to  form  an 
association,  whether  of  nations  or  individuals  com- 
posed of  debtors  and  creditors,  was  to  build  upon 
the  sand,  and  that  a  League  of  Nations  thus  com- 
posed would  never  win  the  confidence  of  expectant 
and  practical  men  and  women.  Finance,  he  could 
have  exclaimed,  was  the  key  to  the  settlement,  as 
sea-power  and  shipping  had  been  to  the  war.  Set 
Europe  on  her  feet  again  as  the  busy  centre  of  the 
world's  industries,  fill  her  empty  factories  with  raw 

103 


EUROPE  IX  CONVALESCENCE 

material,  provide  emplo\Tiient  for  her  demobilized 
soldiers,  put  them  to  work  upon  tlie  goods  for  which. 
at  the  moment,  evenone  is  asking,  and  even-one  is 
still  able  to  pay.  and  you  will  be  keeping  solvent — 
nay.  more,  keeping  alive  (for  it  is  a  matter  of  life 
and  death  to  tens  of  thousands) — men  and  women 
who  will  be  your  friends  and  your  customers  in  after 
years. 

As  regards  the  Gennan  people,  our  relations,  he 
could  have  said,  will  be  difficult.  We  owe  them  the 
strictest  and  most  punctual  justice.  We  must  carr\- 
out,  in  the  letter  and  in  the  spirit,  the  terms  on  which 
they  laid  down  their  arms.  But  we  cannot  forget. 
and  it  is  for  us  to  see  that  they  come  to  understand, 
the  nature  of  the  crime  in  which  they  have  been 
the  passive,  but  no  less  for  that  the  responsible, 
accomplices.  They  must  realize  what  it  means  to 
have  brought  war.  and  four  and  a  half  years  of 
anguish  and  miser\-.  upon  the  peoples  whose  homes 
they  have  destroyed  or  defiled.  If  Cologne  and 
Frankfort  stand  where  they  have  stood  for  cen- 
turies, while  Ypres  and  Arras  and  Belgrade  are  in 
ruins,  let  us  see  to  it  that,  according  to  the  strict 
letter  of  the  terms,  Gennany  pays,  and  pays  as 
quickly  as  her  revived  production  allows,  for  every 
wrong  that  she  has  done,  so  far  as  it  can  be  assessed 
in  money  value,  towards  the  civilian  populations  of 
her  enemies.     It  is  true  that,  on  this  basis.  Britain 

104 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

will  not  receive  so  much  as  those  whose  civiHan 
populations  have  suffered,  not  on  sea  and  from  the 
air  only,  but  on  land;  but  the  victims  of  the  Zeppelin 
and  the  dependents  of  our  heroic  merchant  seamen 
will  be  provided  for;  and  as  Britain  and  her 
Dominions  did  not  enter  the  war  with  the  thought 
of  gain,  neither  would  they  desire  to  strike  a  hard 
bargain  in  the  moment  of  victory.  We  are  a  nation 
of  seamen  and  of  traders;  and,  as  such,  we  have 
played  our  good  part  in  the  common  effort.  But 
we  are  not  a  nation  of  shopkeepers. 

Thus  it  was  that  he  might  have  spoken  and  could 
have  spoken.  The  facts  were  at  his  command,  and 
the  men  who  had  worked  out  their  implications 
were  at  his  service.  Nor  was  he,  so  it  appears, 
unaware  of  the  opportunity  opened  out  to  him. 
One  of  those  who  pleaded  with  him  in  this  sense 
during  those  critical  days  has  related  how  the 
Premier,  with  a  good  angel  at  one  ear  and  a  bad 
at  the  other,  seemed  nearly  won  to  the  better  cause. 
He  erred,  not,  like  the  English  people,  out  of  ignor- 
ance, but  deliberately,  out  of  cowardice  and  lack 
of  faith.  At  the  pinnacle  of  his  career,  when  the 
moral  leadership  of  Europe  lay  within  his  grasp,  he 
yielded  to  the  Tempter  and  made  what  will  live  in 
human  annals  as  one  of  the  Greatest  Refusals  in  his- 
ton,-.  He  signed  against  the  light,  and  the  sin  of  one 
weak  mortal,  entrusted  with  power  for  which  he  had 

105 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

not  the  moral  stature,  caused  suffering  to  millions, 
and  kept  a  continent  in  chaos.  For  all  his  bravado, 
he  has  been  a  haunted  man  ever  since. 

Durine:  the  first  week  after  the  armistice  the  moral 
thermometer  of  the  British  people  went  down  some 
fifty  degrees.  During  the  subsequent  month,  right 
up  to  polling  day  in  the  middle  of  December,  it  con- 
tinued to  fall.  The  self-dedication,  the  unselfish 
idealism,  the  sense  of  national  and  individual 
responsibility  for  the  making  of  a  better  world, 
painfully  achieved  and  sustained  throughout  more 
than  four  years  of  tension  were  dissipated  in  a  riot 
of  electioneering,  thrown  like  chaff  on  the  winds  of 
demagogic  claptrap  and  invective.  A  section  of  the 
Press,  with  a  lapse  of  memory  more  excusable  in 
journalism  than  in  statesmanship,  neglecting  the 
Pre-Armistice  Agreement  of  but  a  week  or  two 
before,  loudly  demanded  that  Germany  should  be 
asked  to  defray  the  entire  cost  of  the  war.  After 
a  few  vain  attempts  at  evasion  the  Premier  yielded, 
and  was  then  led  on,  floundering  and  uncomfort- 
able, from  one  pitfall  to  another.  Ignoring  the 
state  of  Europe  and  the  appeals  which  were  already 
pressing  in  for  the  services  of  British  troops  in  main- 
taining order,  and  equally  blind  to  the  state  of 
employment  at  home,  he  pledged  himself  to  rapid 
demobilization ;  then,  faced  with  the  possibility  of 
Britain  entering  the  council  chamber  shorn  of  the 

1 06 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

force  wherewith  to  execute  her  decisions,  he  turned 
round  and  with  characteristic  insouciance  made  per- 
haps the  greatest  incursion  ever  attempted  by  a  Brit- 
ish statesman  into  continental  politics  by  calling  for 
the  abolition  of  all  conscript  armies.  Danes  and 
Dutchmen,  Swedes  and  Swiss,  unfamiliar  with  slap- 
dash thinking,  not  hitherto  associated  with  a  British 
Premier,  must  have  rubbed  their  eyes  in  amazement, 
but  the  compatriots  of  Marshal  Foch,  who  had 
surely  a  right  at  such  a  moment  to  feel  a  pride  in 
the  military  system  which  had  borne  them  to  vic- 
tory, may  have  been  pardoned  for  being  conscious 
of  other  sentiments  than  surprise.  And  so  the 
campaign  proceeded.  To  speak  of  Central  Europe 
in  terms  of  relief,  of  encouragement,  of  organiza- 
tion, was  to  be  stamped  as  a  "pro-German,"  and,  in 
the  eyes  of  the  unenlightened  electorate.  Central 
Europe  was  still  thought  of  as  either  wholly  Ger- 
man or  as  still  under  German  dominion.  It  was  not 
till  many  months  after  the  armistice  that  the  term 
"Central  Empires"  fell  into  disuse  among  public 
speakers  and  writers.^  The  problems  of  the  newly 
liberated  states  remained  wholly  unknown,  and  the 
problems  of  Germany  herself  were  minimized  and 
evaded  by  politicians,  whose  business  was  rather  to 
ride  to  victory  on  past  events  than  to  shed  light  on 

'  It  occurs  prominently  in  a  New  York  Nation  in  an  October, 
1 92 1,  issue. 

107 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

the  existing  situation.  Thus  it  was  that  by  a  crown- 
ing instance  of  that  British  slow-wittedness  which 
has  sometimes  carried  EngHshmen  in  the  past 
through  dangers  greater  than  they  knew,  during 
the  weeks  when  her  statesmen  were  marring  the 
future  for  which  the  owner  of  her  youth  had  given 
their  hves,  the  conscience  of  Britain  found  no  tongue 
wherewith  to  speak.  The  Press,  the  Universities, 
the  Churches,  all  ignored  the  infamy  which  was 
being  committed.  Here  and  there  a  brave  voice  like 
that  of  Bishop  Gore,  representative  of  the  true 
Christianity,  was  raised  in  protest  against  the  hurri- 
cane; but  there  was  no  organized  opposition.  The 
official  leaders  of  the  Church  evidently  regarded 
the  question  of  the  violation  of  the  Pre-Armistice 
Agreement  as  beyond  their  province.  A  year  later 
they  were  organizing  collections  on  Holy  Innocents' 
Day  for  the  countless  victims  of  a  ruler  who,  if  less 
direct  a  murderer  than  his  predecessor,  had  slain  his 
tens  of  thousands  where  Plerod  had,  at  the  most, 
slain  thousands.  Even  the  opposing  political  parties 
w^ere  cowed  into  silence.  The  Labour  manifesto 
demanded  reparation  without  making  clear  the  vital 
distinction  between  damages  and  war-costs,  whilst 
the  Liberal  leader  lamely  admitted,  to  his  shame,  in 
answer  to  a  Scottish  heckler,  that  the  claim  to  total 
war-costs  was  justifiable.  It  did  not  save  him  his 
seat. 

1 08 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

Meanwhile,  what  was  happening  in  the  wider 
world?  The  story  of  the  first  eight  or  ten  weeks 
after  the  armistice  can  be  summed  up  in  three  words 
— delay,  confusion,  and  disillusionment.  Hostilities 
with  Austria-Hungary  and  Turkey  had  ended  in 
each  case  with  an  armistice  and  a  consequent  mili- 
tary occupation;  but  the  resulting  problems  were 
left  to  be  handled  by  those  most  directly,  and  there- 
fore the  less  impartially,  concerned  with  them.  The 
Austro-Hungarian  armistice  line,  drawn  up  by  the 
Italian  Commander-in-Chief  and  hastily  passed  by 
the  Supreme  Council  at  Paris,  corresponded  in  a 
remarkable  manner  with  the  line  drawn  in  the  Treaty 
of  London;  and  the  Jugo-Slavs  of  Ljubliana  and 
Split  and  Sebenik  and  Kotor,  who  were  expecting 
a  composite  force  of  Allied  troops  to  consolidate 
their  liberation  from  the  Habsburg  yoke,  found 
themselves  with  Italians  alone  quartered  upon  them, 
to  remain  there  for  many  months  and  spread  new 
seeds  of  embitterment  and  misunderstanding.  Sara- 
jevo and  Zagreb  in  their  turn  were  left  almost  en- 
tirely to  the  Serbs.  Meanwhile  the  Turkish 
armistice  produced  an  even  more  plenteous  har- 
vest of  strife,  culminating  eventually  in  a  new  war 
which,  as  these  lines  are  being  written,  is  still  pro- 
ceeding. But  that  lies  outside  the  framework  of  this 
volume. 

As  for  the  economic  problem,  the  master  question 
109 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

of  the  moment,  it  was  simply  shelved.  The  Tad- 
poles and  Tapers  who  were  busy  cutting  coupons 
and  counting  constituencies  had  no  time  to  spare 
on  trivial  tasks,  such  as  the  restocking  and  revictual- 
ling  of  Europe.  The  momentum  of  war-time  policy 
and  organization  lasted  long  enough  for  the  British 
Cabinet  to  approve  and  transmit,  on  November  13, 
a  proposal  emanating  from  the  Allied  Maritime 
Council  for  that  body  and  its  staff  to  be  merged  into 
a  General  Economic  Council,  "which  would  co- 
ordinate the  work  of  the  various  councils,  and 
through  them  the  work  of  the  Programme  Com- 
mittees" for  the  problems  of  the  transition  period. 
But  when  the  proposal  met  with  unintelligent  oppo- 
sition from  Washington,  it  was  not  pressed  by  a 
government  which,  as  the  days  went  on,  was  less 
and  less  inclined  to  identify  itself  with  a  healing 
and  remedial  policy  for  Central  Europe.  The  result 
was  first  a  deadlock  and  then  a  rapid  dismantling 
and  disintegration  of  the  whole  organization  so 
laboriously  built  up.  First  the  American  repre- 
sentatives declined  to  continue  serving,  in  face  of 
the  attitude  of  their  government,  and  then,  with  the 
discontinuance  of  the  financial  arrangements  under 
which  it  had  been  carried  on,  the  other  governments 
already  debtors,  lost  interest  in  the  work.  When, 
in  December,  the  Food  Controllers  and  other  inter- 
ested members  of  the  Allied  governments  met,  at 

no 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

Mr.  Hoover's  instigation,  to  consider  the  problem 
of  revictualling,  now  growing  increasingly  urgent, 
it  was  upon  the  basis  of  the  creation  of  an  entirely 
new  body.  After  endless  discussion,  centring 
round  the  degree  of  executive  power  to  be  delegated 
by  the  governments  to  the  director  of  operations, 
an  Allied  Supreme  Council  of  Supply  and  Relief 
was  eventually  established  in  January,  191 9.  What 
followed  is  best  described  in  the  words  of  the  his- 
torian of  the  inter- Allied  shipping  control.  The  new 
Council,  "restricted  to  one  not  clearly  separable 
part  of  the  many  economic  problems  facing  the 
Allies,  without  the  assistance  of  a  staff  accustomed 
to  work  together,  and  without  either  the  uniting 
influence  of  war  or  the  tradition  of  united  action 
which  that  force  had  given  to  the  war  organization, 
proved  ineffective.  In  February,  1919,  it  was 
merged  in  and  replaced  by  the  Supreme  Economic 
Council,  which  was  in  personnel,  in  functions,  and 
in  general  principles  of  organization,  almost  exactly 
the  same  as  the  body  into  which  the  Transport 
Executive  had  proposed  to  transform  the  Transport 
Council  at  the  beginning  of  the  previous  November. 
Even  so,  however,  the  new  Council  was  too  tardily 
commenced,  too  hurriedly  improvised,  and  insuffi- 
ciently ecjuipped  with  a  personnel  accustomed  to 
corporate  work.  Moreover,  over  three  invaluable 
months  had  in  the  meantime  been  lost.    There  can 

III 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

be  little  doubt  that  if  the  two  proposals  made  by  the 
Transport  Executive  before  the  armistice  had  been 
adopted,  the  economic  position  in  the  spring  of 
19 1 9,  and  possibly  afterwards,  would  have  been 
substantially  better.  The  German  ships  would  have 
been  at  work  in  December  instead  of  March,  and 
food  would  have  gone  into  Germany  as  from  Janu- 
ary instead  of  April,  with  results  it  is  not  easy  now  to 
measure  exactly  upon  the  political  position  in  Ger- 
many and  the  consequent  difficulties  of  the  earlier 
peace  negotiations.  At  the  same  time  the  relief 
assistance  given  to  the  rest  of  Europe  would  have 
been  facilitated," 

These  words,  with  the  wealth  of  human  meaning 
which  must  be  read  into  their  official  phrasing, 
should  serve  to  destroy  the  legend,  so  current  in 
Germany  and  elsewhere,  which  makes  the  continu- 
ance of  the  blockade  one  of  the  chief  indictments 
against  the  Allies'  policy  after  the  armistice.  It 
was  not  the  continuance,  but,  to  put  it  paradoxically, 
the  discontinuance  of  the  blockade  wherein  their 
real  fault  consisted,  or,  in  other  words,  the  discon- 
tinuance of  the  positive  system  of  inter-Allied 
economic  organization  which  had  developed,  after 
four  and  a  half  years  of  warfare,  out  of  what  had 
originally  been  established  with  a  negative  and 
preventive  function.  The  blockade,  as  we  have 
seen,  was  continued  for  military  and  naval  reasons. 

112 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

But  it  would  have  been  useful  also  for  economic 
reasons,  as  a  safeguard  of  the  policy  of  "no  cake 
until  all  have  bread,"  against  the  indiscriminate 
use  of  shipping  space  for  other  than  necessary 
freight,  had  it  been  supplemented  by  positive 
measures  of  organization  such  as  had  been  worked 
out  by  the  responsible  authorities.  As  it  was,  the 
blockade  lay  like  a  dead  hand  over  Central  Europe; 
the  German  ships  stayed  idle  in  German  harbours, 
and  the  organization  which  should  and  could  have 
sped  the  productive  forces  of  Europe  on  their  way 
was  allowed  to  disintegrate  in  obscurity. 

Before  concluding  this  section  of  our  survey  we 
must  take  a  glance  across  the  Atlantic.  We  have 
seen  that  the  Washington  government  was  opposed 
to  the  formation  of  a  General  Economic  Council. 
It  "took  the  view,"  to  quote  our  authority  once 
more,  "that  it  was  desirable  after  the  cessation  of 
hostilities  that  the  war  organization  should  be  dis- 
continued, and  that  where  necessary  the  new 
problems  of  the  armistice  period  should  be  dealt 
with  by  appropriate  new  machinery."  This  line  of 
policy  on  the  part  of  President  Wilson  was  partly 
due  to  sheer  ignorance  of  the  economic  situation 
in  Europe  and  the  indispensable  part  that  the  inter- 
Allied  economic  organization  had  been  playing, 
and  should  be  allowed  to  continue  to  play — an 
ignorance  which  was  not  corrected  till  his  arrival 
»  113 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

in  Europe  at  Christmas.  It  was  partly  also  due  to 
an  academic  habit  of  thought,  which  made  a  clean 
and  theoretical  break  between  war-time  and  peace- 
time problems,  and  looked  forward  to  the  establish- 
ment of  new  working  machinery  on  his  own 
American  model.  In  any  case,  it  would  have  been 
better  for  Europe  if  the  President  had  either  not 
come  over  at  all  and  delegated  fuller  powers  to  his 
economic  experts  on  the  spot,  or  had  taken  the  first 
ship  after  the  armistice.  As  it  was,  he  delayed  in 
America  long  enough  to  allow  the  disintegrating 
process  to  make  headway,  and  to  make  the  fatal 
address  to  Congress  on  December  2,  when,  no  doubt 
to  conciliate  the  Republican  opposition,  he  declared 
for  the  abolition  of  war-time  controls.  Having 
thus  struck  a  blow  in  the  dark  at  the  Continent 
which  looked  to  him  as  its  Messiah,  he  took  ship, 
together  with  his  Secretary  of  State,  with  the 
scheme  of  a  League  of  Nations  in  his  pocket  which 
he  refrained  from  discussing  with  him.  He  reached 
Brest  on  December  13  and  London  on  the  26th,  on 
the  eve  of  the  declaration  of  the  polls,  and  drove 
through  cheering  Christmas  crowds  to  Buckingham 
Palace.  Next  day  the  same  small  group  of  Foreign 
Office  workers  stood  on  a  balcony  and  watched  him 
enter  No.  10  Downing  Street  to  confer  with  the 
British  Cabinet.  As  he  stood  on  the  threshold, 
with  the  Premier  awaiting  him  within,  he  turned 

114 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

round  to  the  moving  picture  men  and  smiled  as 
they  revolved  their  handles.  The  man  behind,  had 
he  only  known  it,  had  already  stabbed  him  in  the 
back. 


115 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE    PEACE    CONFERENCE 

A  FTER  this  meeting  between  the  British  and 
"*  *  American  representatives,  which,  warned  by 
one  experience  of  an  Anglo-Saxon  PreHminary 
Conference,  President  Harding  resolutely  declined 
to  repeat,  the  statesmen  in  whose  hands  lay  the 
destinies  of  Europe  at  last  met  face  to  face  in  full 
conference  at  Paris.  It  was  now  the  second  week 
in  January,  nearly  two  months  after  the  armistice. 
But  it  was  still  not  a  Peace  Conference,  but  a 
preliminary  conference  of  the  victorious  powers 
to  determine  the  terms  which  should  be  offered  to 
the  plenipotentiaries  of  the  enemy;  and  the  idea  of 
concluding  a  Preliminary  Peace  with  each  of  the 
five  enemy  powers,  which  remained,  as  late  as 
March,  in  the  minds  of  those  responsible  for  the 
technical  procedure,  was  eventually  abandoned.  It 
was  resolved,  instead,  to  concentrate  into  one  huge 
document  all  the  matters  that  required  to  be  regu- 
lated with  each   of  the  enemy   states   respectively, 

ii6 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

and  to  set  to  work  first  upon  the  German  volume. 
As  a  result,  no  personal  conference  took  place  with 
the  enemy  delegates  at  all  and,  to  quote  from  the 
most  authoritative  British  account  of  the  proceedings 
"the  complexity  of  conditions  and  the  pressure  of 
time  compelled  the  Treaty  to  be  drawn  up  in  sec- 
tions and  prevented  the  cumulative  and  converging 
effect  of  the  provisions  from  being  realized  at  the 
time."  The  German  volume  thus  composed,  was 
ready  in  May,  and  then  made  known  in  a  bare 
summary,  which  rendered  effective  criticism  diffi- 
cult, to  the  Allied  peoples.  It  was  signed  on  June 
28  and  subsequently  ratified,  after  debates  which 
were  little  concerned  with  its  details,  in  the  British 
and  Dominion,  as  in  the  other  Allied,  Parliaments. 
It  came  into  force,  after  a  formal  exchange  of 
ratifications,  on  January  10,  1920;  but  it  was  not  till 
the  Spa  meeting  in  the  summer  of  that  year  that 
British,  French,  and  German  statesmen  met  for  the 
first  time  round  a  table  as — had  Ludendorff  not  put 
his  professional  pride  before  the  interests  of  his 
country — they  might  have  met  in  October,  1918. 

Exhausted  by  the  mass  of  work  involved  in  the 
preparation  of  the  German  volume,  the  four  rested 
from  their  labours  in  the  summer  of  1919.  Austria- 
Hungary,  Bulgaria,  and  Turkey  were  still  waiting 
to  know  their  fate.  The  last-named,  indeed, 
favoured  by  an  unduly  lenient  armistice,  had  by 

117 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

now,  with  the  diminution  of  the  AlHed  armies,  re- 
covered her  old-time  obstinacy  and  ahnost  for- 
gotten her  defeat.  When  she  needed  a  reminder 
the  Greeks  were  the  only  instrument  of  Allied 
power  available.  They  landed  in  Smyrna,  and 
plunged  into  a  Xenophontic  adventure  of  which  it 
is  no  easier  for  Athens  than  for  the  Western  ob- 
server to  see  the  end.  It  was  September  lo  before 
the  Austrian  Treaty  was  ready  and  signed.  The 
Bulgarian  followed  on  November  27,  and  the 
Hungarian  on  June  4,  1920,  to  be  ratified  only  in 
July,  1 92 1,  whilst  the  Turkish,  put  together  with 
infinite  labour  at  San  Remo  and  elsewhere,  was 
eventually  signed  on  August  16,  1920,  only  to  be 
torn  in  pieces  by  the  defeat  of  Venizelos  at  the  polls 
and  the  return  of  King  Constantine  with  fresh  ideas 
and  ambitions.  It  was  not  till  September  i,  1921, 
that  Great  Britain,  though  still  at  war  with  Turkey, 
was  able  to  proclaim  the  official  "termination  of  the 
war."  Such  is  the  long  arm  of  consequence  result- 
ing from  the  thoughtless  adoption  of  a  vicious 
procedure. 

But  this  brief  discussion  on  methods  has  carried 
the  story  too  quickly  forward.  It  is  time  to  return 
from  procedure  to  substance.  It  was  a  conference 
of  victors  both  great  and  small;  but  it  was  soon 
apparent  that,  as  in  181 5,  the  power  would  be 
wielded  by  those  who  had  also  the  responsibility. 

118 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

The  arrangement  by  which  decisions  were  made  by 
the  four  or  five  Great  Powers  and  communicated,  as 
edicts,  to  their  smaller  colleagues,  would  have  been 
above  criticism  had  the  Great  Powers  themselves 
been  conscious  of  the  greatness  of  their  obligations. 
But  the  British  General  Election  had  poisoned  the 
atmosphere.  The  British  Premier  entered  the 
conference-room  with  his  election  pledges  hanging 
like  a  millstone  round  his  neck.  In  order  to  embody 
in  the  Treaty  financial  demands  which  he  knew 
would  be  contested,  and  rightly  contested,  by  the 
President  as  contrary  to  the  Pre-Armistice  Agree- 
ment, he  was  constantly  forced  to  throw  wider  con- 
siderations to  the  winds;  and  to  avoid  the 
employment  of  British  and  Dominion  troops,  now 
in  rapid  process  of  demobilization  on  ships  which 
should  have  been  used  for  the  restocking  and  re- 
victualling  of  Europe,  he  was  obliged  to  dally  and 
temporize  with  difficulties  which,  with  the  British 
army  still  in  being,  he  might  easily  have  prevented 
from  ever  arising  at  all.  Great  Britain  w^as  indeed 
being  overwhelmed  during  those  months,  as  the 
Foreign  Secretary  once  stated,  by  demands  for 
British  troops,  for  the  services  of  those  kindly  but 
inarticulate  khaki  battalions  whose  imperturbable 
sang-froid  and  good  humour,  had  they  arrived  in 
good  time,  could  have  maintained  a  temporary  Pa.v 
Britannica  anywhere  from  Riga  to  Reichenberg  and 

119 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

Teschen,  from  Danzig  to  Fiume,  and  from  Beuthen 
to  Lemberg  and  Buda-Pesth. 

The  British  election  commitments  had  another 
and  even  more  disastrous  reaction  upon  the  Con- 
ference. They  rendered  it  impossible  for  British 
statesmen  to  argue  against  the  validity  of  such  of 
the  arrangements  concluded  during  the  war  as 
conflicted  with  the  Wilsonian  basis  of  peace.  Those 
who  had  themselves  been  the  first  to  violate  the 
Pre-Armistice  Agreement  were  in  no  position  to  re- 
mind Italian,  Japanese,  Roumanian,  and  other 
statesmen  of  its  implications  in  regard  to  the  so- 
called  "secret  treaties."  It  was  no  doubt  an 
inexplicable  mistake  of  tactics  on  the  part  of  the 
President  that  he  did  not  drive  his  own  logic  home 
in  November  and  obtain  an  express  repudiation  of 
claims  contrary  to  the  Pre-Armistice  basis  while 
the  American  army  was  still  an  indispensable  instru- 
ment of  victory.  Or  he  could  have  registered  a 
public  protest,  and  left  the  Conference  on  the  first 
occasion  that  the  validity  of  such  claims  was  main- 
tained in  his  presence,  instead  of  allowing  himself 
to  be  entangled  in  detailed  discussions  and 
compromises.  But  it  was  upon  Britain,  with  her 
greater  knowledge  and  experience,  that  the  respon- 
sibility for  such  a  protest  really  rested.  Together, 
Britain  and  America  could  have  made  a  clean  sweep 
of  the  diplomatic  cobwebs  of  the  war.     But  such  a 

1 20 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

collaboration,  if  it  was  to  be  successful,  implied  a 
willingness  both  to  adopt  a  generous  and  compre- 
hensive economic  policy  and  to  subordinate  individ- 
ual claims  and  interests  to  broader  human  ends. 
The  President,  who  had  no  claims  to  make  except 
for  a  few  ships  and  cables,  would  have  been  ready 
for  such  an  alliance.  But  his  British  colleague, 
unlike  his  greater  forbear  in  1815,  was  tied  hand 
and  foot  by  his  election  pledges,  and  the  devoted  la- 
bour of  subordinates,  eager  to  set  their  knowledge 
and  their  sympathy  at  the  service  of  Europe,  were  of 
little  avail  when  their  chief  was  largely  estopped 
from  making  use  of  them.  As  a  result  the  Treaties 
were  not,  as  the  President  hoped,  a  clean-drawn  char- 
ter of  a  new  Europe,  but  represented  a  compromise 
between  the  conscientious  labours  of  experts  on  the 
one  hand  and  the  claims  and  commitments  of  politi- 
cians on  the  other.  What  is  sound  and  enduring:  in 
them — and  it  is  much — is  due  mainly  to  the 
diplomats;  and  what  is  flimsy,  faulty,  and  indefen- 
sible to  the  politicians.  Had  the  expert  staffs  of  the 
five  Great  Powers,  the  much-abused  and  much- 
derided  bureaucrats  who,  because  their  tongues  are 
tied,  are  so  convenient  a  scapegoat  for  other  men's 
sins,  been  left  alone  to  draw  up  the  Treaties,  they 
would  have  emerged  devoid  of  most  of  the  imper- 
fections which  mar  their  usefulness  as  the  basis 
of  the  public  law  of  post-war  Europe.     As  it  is, 

121 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

there  is  little  in  their  territorial  provisions  which  is 
unanswerably  indefensible;  but  the  process  of 
bargaining  and  bartering  which  accompanied  their 
drafting  led  to  much  ill-will  and  recrimination, 
which  has  had  a  lasting  effect  on  the  mutual  relations 
of  the  signatory  powers,  both  great  and  small. 

History  will  assess  the  full  measure  of  the  moral 
injury  inflicted  upon  the  world,  and  the  British 
Empire,  by  Britain's  sudden  swerve  towards  selfish- 
ness. For  the  moment,  it  would  seem  to  mark  the 
first  step  in  a  process  of  disintegration  which  later 
statesmen,  even  if,  as  they  surely  must,  they 
acknowledge,  and  seek  publicly  to  retrieve,  the  sins 
of  their  predecessors,  will  find  it  hard  to  arrest; 
for  the  accumulated  moral  capital  of  a  wide-spread- 
ing Commonwealth  like  ours,  once  wantonly 
dissipated,  is  not  so  quickly  regained.  Thus  the 
public  opinion  of  the  Dominions,  always  susceptible, 
despite  an  outward  show  of  independence,  to  English 
fashions  of  thought,  was  quick  to  follow  the  Premier 
down  the  slipping  slope;  and  the  chosen  represen- 
tatives of  the  men  who  at  Ypres  and  at  Vimy,  at 
Pozieres  and  Villers  Bretonneux,  had  given  their 
all  for  the  cause  of  freedom,  without  one  least 
thought  of  fee  or  gain,  engaged  themselves  to  their 
peoples  to  bring  home  substantial  spoils  in  pounds 
or  dollars,  and  were  still,  thirty  months  afterwards, 
haggling  painfully  over  the  percentage  division  of 

122 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

an  indemnity  to  which,  for  all  practical  purposes, 
they  had  no  rightful  claim  at  all.  What  chance,  in 
such  an  atmosphere,  had  the  Italian  proposal  for 
the  cancelling  of  inter-Allied  debts,  and  the  launch- 
ing of  an  international  credit  scheme,  modestly  put 
forward  by  a  nation  which  was  dependent,  for  the 
moment,  for  raw  materials,  foodstuffs,  and  financial 
favours  upon  Allies  who  took  no  pains  to  conceal 
their  dominant  and  domineering  position?  France, 
with  her  industry  crippled  and  with  the  gaping 
wound  in  her  side,  was,  for  the  time  being,  equally 
dependent — so  at  least  her  Premier  considered — 
upon  the  good  graces  of  Britain ;  so,  with  a  mistaken 
judgment  which  M.  Tardieu.  with  all  his  literary 
ability,  is  able  but  lamely  to  defend,  she  determined 
to  associate  herself  with  a  view  of  the  German 
liabilities  which,  by  including  items  of  pure  war- 
costs,  contrary  to  the  Pre-Armistice  Agreement, 
inevitably  put  her  own  just  claims  for  reparation 
in  the  shade  and  by  nearly  trebling  the  total  bill 
made  it  increasingly  difficult  to  begin  extracting 
payment  from  Germany  at  all.^  Dearly  have  the 
two  countries,  bound  together  by  the  holiest  of  ties, 
suffered,  individually  and  in  their  mutual  relations, 
from  the  relapse  of  the  one  into  the  old  discredited 
manners  of  petty  shopkeeping,  and  for  the  reliance 
of  the  other,  honourable,  if,  for  once,  mistaken,  on 
^  See  Appendices  III.,  IV.,  and  V. 
123 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

the  generous  and  moderating  tradition  of  British 
foreign  poHcy.  Clemenceau  had  known  and 
watched  Enghsh  statesmanship,  for  over  fifty  years, 
with  all  its  intellectual  limitations  and  compensating 
integrity  and  sense  of  honour.  How  could  he  be 
expected  to  realize  that,  by  a  strange  accident  of 
fortune,  this  crisis  in  British  history  found,  for 
once,  no  English  gentleman  at  the  helm? 

Thus  it  was  that,  without  unity  of  purpose  or 
of  principle,  without  the  force  to  uphold  their 
decisions,  and  steeped  in  an  atmosphere  of  vague 
idealism  which  became  daily  more  unreal  and  hypo- 
critical as  day  followed  sickening  day,  the  four 
dictators  sat  and  drew  lines  on  the  map  of  Europe 
while  the  power  was  steadily  slipping  from  their 
grasp.  For  the  peoples  of  the  Continent,  cheated 
of  the  hopes  of  which  Peace  had  been  the  symbol, 
driven  half  crazy  by  having  to  live,  at  the  expected 
moment  of  relief,  through  the  worst  of  five  war- 
winters,  were  turning  their  eyes  towards  Bolshevism 
— from  the  unhelpful  phrase-makers  and  Parliamen- 
tarians of  Western  democracy  to  the  rough-handed 
dictators  of  Moscow.  There,  at  least,  was  action, 
not  inertia,  and  a  faith  that  gave  life  and  meaning 
to  the  formulae  of  platform  and  manifesto.  The  red 
tide,  which,  in  one  critical  week,  had  even  washed 
the  sturdy  bourgeois  ramparts  of  Switzerland  and 
the  Netherlands,  swept  for  a  moment  over  Munich, 

124 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

threatened  Vienna,  and  submerged  Buda-Pesth.  A 
Red  Hungarian  army,  half  Bolshevik,  half  National- 
ist, invaded  Slovakia;  while  in  Russia  itself  a  Jew 
who  had  but  lately  been  an  Eastside  journalist  in 
New  York  was  in  command  of  an  army  which, 
with  the  melting  of  the  Allied  forces,  was  soon  to 
be  the  largest  in  Europe.  Poland,  Roumania,  the 
new-born  Baltic  states,  trembled  for  their  indepen- 
dence. Allied  troops  sufficient  to  face  the  menace 
were  not  available.  The  peoples  of  Central  Europe 
learnt,  in  bitter  moments  of  helplessness,  to  rely  on 
their  own  right  arm;  and  if  Poland  and  Roumania, 
Czecho-SIovakia  and  Jugo-Slavia,  seeking  to  weld 
their  composite  youth  into  a  trustworthy  defence 
force  against  dangers  far  less  imaginary  than  those 
now  confronted  by  the  British  Navy,  are  employing 
French  or  French-trained  instructors  to  hasten  and 
to  perfect  the  process,  this  should  be  a  cause  neither 
of  astonishment  nor  reproach  to  those  who  had  not 
the  wisdom  to  foresee  their  needs.  Had  we  supplied 
them  in  good  season  with  the  means  and  the  material 
for  productive  work,  many  of  the  men  who  are  now 
being  called,  and  flock,  not  unwillingly,  to  those 
banners  would  have  been  busy  creating  wealth,  and 
the  purchasing  power,  for  the  lack  of  which  Britain 
and  industrial  America  are  paying  in  unemployment 
to-day.  It  is  not  for  us  to  preach  disarmament  to 
nations  of  whose  mutual  exasperations  we  are  our- 

125 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

selves  largely  the  cause.  Let  us  do  what  is  still 
possible  to  provide  the  productive  activities  which 
will  serve  to  allay  suspicion  and  provocations 
and  thus  gradually  to  compose  their  feuds. 

We  have  seen  that  a  supreme  Economic  Council 
was  eventually  appointed  after  three  months  of 
heart-breaking  delay,  and  with  an  untrained  staff, 
in  February,  191 9.  But  the  situation  was  now 
irreparably  out  of  hand;  and,  in  any  case,  its  powers 
were  too  limited  to  enable  it  to  achieve  results  of 
lasting  value.  What  should  have  been  handled  in 
October  as  a  combined  problem  of  credit,  transport, 
and  supply  was  left  to  be  handled  in  February  as 
a  mere  problem  of  relief.  With  matters  as  they 
then  were  no  other  measures,  or,  at  least,  no  other 
first  measures,  were  possible;  but  charity  is  always 
tainting,  not  least  between  nations;  and  the  dis- 
advantages attaching  to  its  adoption  have  in  this 
case  been  slow  to  efface  themselves.  Sir  William 
Goode  and  Mr.  Hoover  and  their  able  staff  of  relief 
workers  rendered  yeoman  service,  on  a  field 
familiar  to  the  British  and  American  mind,  from 
Germany  and  Austria  as  far  afield  as  Armenia ;  and 
they  were  discreetly  reinforced  by  private  agencies, 
notably  by  the  Society  of  Friends.  But  the  inevi- 
table relationship  of  patronage  has  brought  subtle 
and  demoralizing  influences  in  its  train.  In 
Austria,   shorn   of   her   self-respect,   it  has   bred   a 

126 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

listless  spirit  of  pauperism  which  the  energetic  pro- 
moters of  the  Ter  Meiilen  credit  scheme  are  dis- 
covering to  be  not  the  least  formidable  of  their  many 
obstacles  in  their  attempt  to  set  that  country  on  its 
feet,  while  German  pride  has  only  survived  the 
humiliation  of  witnessing  the  centre  of  the  world's 
culture  treated  as  an  object  of  pity  and  relief  by  try- 
ing to  regard  it  as  an  act  of  just,  if  insufficient  atone- 
ment to  a  martyr  nation.  Here,  as  in  the  nationalist 
feuds  farther  east,  the  sufferings  and  passions  of  the 
post-war  period  have  eclipsed  the  memory  of  the 
war  itself,  and  the  Germans  find  in  our  failure  to 
help  them,  as  we  could  and  should  have  helped  them, 
out  of  their  self-inflicted  distresses,  fresh  reasons 
for  fortifying  their  threatened  self- righteousness 
and  for  refusing  to  face  the  real  issues  and  origins 
of  the  war.  Germany  in  the  autumn  of  1918 
resembled  a  patient  emerging,  exhausted  but  con- 
valescent, from  a  prolonged  period  of  hallucina- 
tion. Handled  with  firmness  and  understanding, 
above  all,  with  consistency,  she  might  have  been  set 
on  the  road  to  a  rapid  healing;  but  first  the  Ameri- 
can, then  the  British,  doctor  bungled  the  case;  and 
the  latter 's  blunder  was  the  greater  in  that  he 
destroyed  the  growing  morale  of  the  German  people 
by  supplying  it  with  just  that  with  which  it  is  above 
all  things  necessary  that  such  a  patient  should  not 
make  play — a  genuine  grievance.    Until  the  manifest 

127 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

injustice  of  the  Pensions  and  Separation  Allowance 
clauses  of  the  Versailles  Treaty  is  publicly  removed, 
Germany  will  remain  blind  to  her  own  guilt,  and  will 
apply  a  diseased  and  jaundiced  vision  to  this  or  that 
other  clause  of  the  Treaty,  which,  if  necessarily 
harsh,  is  perfectly  compatible  with  the  terms  of  her 
surrender. 

No  less  disastrous  has  been  the  effect  upon  the 
British  people  of  the  great  outburst  of  charitable 
organization  which  followed  the  discovery,  months 
after  the  event,  of  the  consequences  of  the  failure 
of  their  statesmen  to  lead  Europe  back  towards 
prosperity.  They  sought,  as  so  often,  to  excuse 
want  of  foresight  and  lack  of  courage  by  fumbling 
in  their  pockets  and  producing  handsome  subscrip- 
tions. The  English-speaking  peoples  are  giant 
givers,  and  it  is  ungracious  to  criticize  what  is,  after 
all,  a  golden  virtue  of  their  defects;  but  money 
given  by  private  individuals  in  a  tardy  attempt  to 
cure  what  should  have  been  prevented  by  public 
policy  carries  with  it  less  than  the  usual  blessing; 
and  it  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  to  those  who, 
for  all  their  subscription  lists,  are  at  bottom  still 
parochially-minded,  that,  as  charity  is  no  substitute 
for  justice,  neither  is  organization  a  substitute  for 
personal  affection  and  understanding.  It  is  a 
redeeming  feature  in  these  poor  charitable  make- 
shifts for  statesmanship  that  they  have,  at  least  in 

128 


THE  SETTLEMENT 

some   cases,    helped   to   bring   such    understanding 
about. 

Meanwhile,  to  return  to  the  Conference,  if  the 
settlement  of  Europe  lagged,  the  organization  of 
the  world  proceeded  w^ith  amazing,  and  indeed 
ominous,  rapidity.  The  President  had  arrived  in 
Paris  with  the  draft  of  a  League  of  Nations  in  his 
pocket.  Lord  Robert  Cecil  met  him  with  another 
draft,  which  had  been  passed  by  the  British  Cabinet. 
Out  of  a  conflation  of  the  two  the  Covenant  took 
shape,  and,  after  a  few  weeks  of  evening  sittings, 
the  document  which  was  to  bring  lasting  peace  and 
justice  to  a  distracted  world  was  ready  to  be  pre- 
sented to  a  full  meeting  of  the  Conference  in 
February.  Soon  afterwards  it  was  announced  that 
it  would  be  embodied  in  each  of  the  five  Treaties, 
thus  becoming  automatically,  and  without  the  sum- 
moning of  a  special  conference,  part  of  the  public 
law  of  the  world.  On  January  lo,  1920,  when  the 
German  Treaty  came  into  force,  the  League  of 
Nations  was  born;  and  ever  since,  and,  indeed, 
already  before  that  date,  the  devoted  and  truly 
international  staff  of  the  secretariat,  drawn  from 
ex-Allied  and  ex-neutral  peoples  alike,  and  now  open 
to  two  of  the  ex-enemies  as  well,  have  been  seeking 
to  repair,  or  rather  to  build  up  afresh,  what  might 
have  been  saved  and  spared  had  the  originator  of  the 
Covenant  been  more  alive  to  the  realities  of  the 
♦  129 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

world  he  tried  so  hard  to  serve.  The  League  is  still 
a  plant  of  tender  growth ;  but  no  one  who  has  seen 
its  staff  at  work,  and  considered  the  range  and 
volume  of  the  business  entrusted  to  it,  can  doubt 
that  it  stands  not  merely  as  an  idea  and  a  symbol, 
but  by  virtue  of  substantial  achievement.  It  is  one 
of  the  ironies  of  history  that  what  will  live,  after 
all,  both  in  idea  and  fact,  as  one  of  the  greatest  con- 
tributions made  by  America  to  the  life  of  the  parent 
continent,  should  have  been  the  cause,  or  the 
occasion,  of  the  downfall  of  its  author  among  his 
own  countrymen.  When  the  United  States  Senate 
rejected  the  Treaties  because  the  Covenant  was  con- 
tained in  them,  the  blow  was  aimed  at  the  President. 
But  it  was  Europe  as  a  whole  that  was  the  sufferer. 
Thus,  by  an  unwitting  stroke,  was  the  victim  of 
European  diplomacy  avenged. 


130 


PART  III 
THE  OUTLOOK 

L'avenir,  c'est  nous-memes 


iji 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  POLITICAL  OUTLOOK 

'T'HE  war,  as  we  have  seen,  has  destroyed  two  of 
*  the  six  Great  Powers  of  pre-war  Europe  and 
gravely  crippled  a  third.  How  will  the  collective 
affairs  of  Europe  be  managed  in  the  coming  years? 
What  will  take  the  place  of  the  old  Concert  of  the 
Powers,  or  of  the  Balance  of  Powers  into  which  it 
was  not  infrequently  resolved? 

President  Wilson  was  in  no  doubt  as  to  an  answer. 
"The  old  discredited  game  of  the  Balance  of  Power," 
he  said  in  one  of  his  addresses  which  formed  the 
accepted  basis  of  peace,  was  to  pass  away  for  ever, 
to  be  replaced  by  a  system  of  firm  and  single-minded 
co-operation,  carried  on  through  the  agency,  not  of 
the  old  diplomatic  machinery,  but  of  a  new  organiza- 
tion, the  League  of  Nations.  In  the  President's  con- 
ception the  league  was  to  take  over  all  that  was  best 
and  most  responsible  in  the  old  Concert  of  the  Great 
Powers,  with  four  improvements.  It  was  to  be 
world  wide  instead  of  European.     It  was  to  include 

133 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

small  States  as  well  as  great.  It  was  to  do  its  work 
through  a  permanent  routine  organization  which 
was  to  meet  at  regular  intervals  and  be  virtually 
indissoluble.  Finally,  it  was  to  be  the  instrument  of 
a  single  concerted  policy  based  upon  a  common  set 
of  liberal  political  principles.  The  League  of 
Nations,  in  other  words,  was  to  be  the  international 
instrument  of  an  idealistic  liberalism,  as  the  Holy 
Alliance,  in  its  day,  was  of  a  benevolent  Con- 
servatism and  the  Vatican  of  the  political  philosophy 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church. 

It  was  with  this  conception  in  his  mind  that  the 
President  hastened  the  preparation  of  the  Covenant 
and  insisted  upon  its  inclusion  in  each  of  the  treaties 
of  peace.  If  the  framework  of  the  new  world  could 
but  be  rightly  constructed,  compromises  of  principle 
and  blunders  of  improvization  made  within  its  limits 
could,  so  he  thought,  be  corrected  at  leisure.  The 
one  indispensable  prerequisite  was  to  provide  man- 
kind with  an  instrumentality  which  would  enable  it 
to  work  out  its  own  political  salvation. 

Does  the  League,  as  it  now  stands,  two  years 
after  its  inauguration,  fill  the  place  designed  for  it 
by  its  author,  or  is  it  likely  to  step  into  it  within 
the  coming  generation?  Both  questions  must  be 
answered  with  a  frank  negative.  The  League  is 
not  doing,  and  is  not  now  likely  to  do,  the  work  for 
which  it  was  designed.     That  is  not  to  say  that  it 

134 


THE  OUTLOOK 

is  a  failure,  or  that  it  is  of  little  value.  On  the  con- 
trar}',  it  is  an  indispensable  part  of  the  machinery 
of  civilization,  and  is  daily  increasing  its  usefulness. 
But  the  work  which  it  is  doing  is  not  of  the  same 
order  as  the  work  for  which  the  President  designed 
it,  and  the  sooner  this  is  recognized  by  public  opinion 
the  sooner  we  shall  return  to  an  atmosphere  of 
candour  and  reality  in  international  affairs.  Much 
confusion  has  been  caused  by  those  who  have 
persisted  in  preaching  the  League  of  Nations  as  a 
panacea  long  after  such  potentialities  of  that  nature 
as  it  ever  possessed  had  evaporated  from  the  scene. 
Englishmen  in  particular,  who  are  apt  to  affect  for 
European  issues  a  sentimentality  which  they  would 
not  dream  of  applying  to  their  own  more  intimate 
concerns,  have  grown  into  the  habit  of  saying  that 
Europe  has  to  choose  between  the  way  of  the  League 
and  the  way  of  suicide  and  ruin.  This  is  one  of 
those  clean  logical  dilemmas  which  spring  from  an 
ignorance  of  fact  and  detail.  Such  language,  so  far 
from  testifying  to  a  faith  in  the  League,  is  little 
more  than  a  self-righteous  soporific — a  convenient 
way  of  dissolving  an  awkward  and  complicated  sub- 
ject in  a  cloud  of  vague  benevolence.  One  is 
reminded  of  the  old  lady  who  refused  to  face  the 
possibility  of  a  world  war  in  191 4  because  she  was 
convinced  that  "the  Powers  would  intervene."  The 
League  of  Nations  is  not,  and  was  never  intended 

135 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

to  be,  a  substitute  for  the  governments  of  its  com- 
ponent states.  As  its  name  implies,  it  is  a  league, 
an  alliance,  an  instrument  of  co-operation,  not  a 
government.  Co-operation,  however,  pre-supposes 
common  policies  and  common  aims;  and  it  is  here 
that  the  League,  or  rather  its  membership,  has  dis- 
appointed the  expectations  of  its  founder.  In  his 
relative  inexperience  of  European  problems  and 
politics  the  President  believed  that  liberal  principles, 
sincerely  accepted  and  honestly  applied  by  the 
European  powers,  would  lead  to  the  adoption  of  a 
common  policy,  at  least  in  the  major  problems.  A 
few  weeks',  even  a  few  days',  experience  of  the  Peace 
Conference  was  enough  to  prove  that  such  a  hope 
was  vain.  On  the  Russian  question,  the  first  large 
immediate  issue  with  which  the  Conference  had  to 
deal,  no  concerted  European  policy  proved  possible 
of  adoption ;  the  angles  of  vision  with  which  the 
British,  French,  Italian,  and  Japanese  governments 
approached  it  were  too  widely  divergent;  and  the 
prolonged  and  discouraging  course  of  compromise 
and  vacillation  into  which  the  Powers  drifted  would 
not  have  been  substantially  different  had  it  been 
handled  by  the  Council  of  the  League  of  Nations 
rather  than  by  the  Supreme  Council  of  the  Allies. 
A  common  European  policy  presupposes  common 
convictions  and  a  common  outlook  among  the  lead- 
ing European  peoples.     Such  convictions  and  such 

136 


THE  OUTLOOK 

an  outlook  have  not  existed  since  the  Middle  Ages 
and  do  not  exist  to-day;  and  it  is  not  in  the  power 
of  any  political  organization,  however  perfectly 
planned,  to  create  them. 

As  a  substitute,  then,  for  the  old  Concert  of  the 
Powers  the  League  has  proved  a  disappointment. 
A  standing  organ  of  European,  and  still  more,  of 
world-policy,  working  upon  an  agreed  and  consistent 
basis  of  principle,  is  as  impracticable  to-day  as  it 
proved  after  1815.  Policies  will  continue  to  be 
shaped  and  co-operations  and  understandings  to  be 
concerted  as  during  the  last  four  centuries,  as  the 
need  arises  for  adjusting  inevitable  disagreements,  in 
this  or  that  centre  of  state  sovereignty,  in  London, 
Paris,  Berlin,  Rome,  Prague,  Tokio,  Washington, 
and  Buenos  Aires,  rather  than  in  the  spacious 
Council  chamber  that  looks  out  over  the  Lake  of 
Rousseau  and  Byron.  To  have  imagined  otherwise 
was  to  ignore  the  limitations  of  the  human  imagina- 
tion and  to  forget  that,  in  the  closest  analogue  which 
exists  to  the  comprehensive  design  of  a  League  of 
Nations,  in  the  British  Empire,  Ottawa  and  Mel- 
bourne and  Pretoria — not  to  speak  of  Dublin — have 
not  yet  learnt  to  adjust  their  policies  and  purposes 
to  the  needs  of  the  Commonwealth  as  a  whole. 

What  prospects  are  involved  for  Europe  in  this 
breakdown  of  the  League's  primary  function  must 
be  discussed  later  on.    Let  us  pause  to  consider  the 

137 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

sphere  of  usefulness  which  still  lies  open,  under 
the  existing  circumstances,  to  President  Wilson's 
creation. 

The  League  of  Nations  has  four  organs — ^the 
Assembly,  the  Council,  the  Court,  and  the  Secre- 
tariat. The  Assembly  was  designed  to  be  an  open 
forum  of  the  intelligence  and  conscience  of  mankind, 
an  expansion  before  a  wider  and  less  technical  circle 
of  the  international  discussions  and  policies  of  the 
Council.  Despite  the  failure  of  its  companion  organ 
to  fulfil  its  appointed  role,  it  can  still  do  most  useful 
work  in  this  field.  It  is  true  that  the  delegates,  both 
of  the  great  and  the  small  Powers,  come  filled  mainly 
with  their  own  concerns,  and  that  their  international 
enthusiasm  is  apt  to  manifest  itself  mainly  in  matters 
in  which  their  own  country  is  not  closely  interested. 
Nevertheless,  the  debates  are  of  real  value  and 
provide  an  opportunity,  such  as  has  hitherto  only 
existed  at  partisan  or  technical  congresses,  of  initiat- 
ing public  discussion,  under  conditions  where  almost 
every  point  of  view  is  represented,  on  problems 
which  form  the  substance  of  international  con- 
troversy and  the  potential  cause  of  future  wars. 
Signer  Tittoni,  for  instance,  did  the  world  a  real 
service  in  1920  when  he  drew  on  himself  the  wrath 
of  the  Canadian  delegation  by  raising  the  far-reach- 
ing issue  of  the  international  control  of  industrial 
raw  materials.      Still   more  valuable,  perhaps,   for 

138 


THE  OUTLOOK 

immediate  purposes,  is  the  occasion  provided  by  the 
Assembly  meetings  for  personal  contacts  between  the 
representatives,  and  the  trained  officials,  of  some 
forty  different  countries. 

The  Council  has  been  described  as  a  disappoint- 
ment; but  as  Mr.  Balfour  told  the  Assembly  last 
September,  no  one  can  read  the  unadorned  pages  of 
its  last  annual  report,  or  even  scan  its  table  of  con- 
tents, without  feeling  that,  if  it  is  not  doing  the 
work  for  which  it  was  designed,  it  has  already  made 
itself   indispensable   by   the   numerous   other  tasks 
which  it,  and  it  alone,  has  been  able  to  undertake. 
General  Smuts  and  the  authors  of  the  British  draft 
of   the   Covenant,   and   presumably   also   President 
Wilson,  intended  it  to  be  a  standing  Conference  of 
Prime    Ministers    similar   to    the    British    Imperial 
Conference.      This    plan    was    thwarted,    whether 
wittingly  or  not,  from  the  moment  that  the  League 
of  Nations  Commission  agreed  to  admit  four  repre- 
sentatives  of   lesser   states  to   membership   of   the 
Council.     It  does  not  require  great  political  experi- 
ence  to   understand   that   confidential   co-operation 
between     states     endowed     with     widely     differing 
measures  of  power  and  responsibility  is  a  virtual 
impossibility.      The    British    Imperial    Conference 
did  not  attain  to  such  reality  as  it  now  possesses 
until  the  federation  of  Canada  and  Australia  and 
the  union  of  South  Africa  had  enabled  its  member- 

139 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

ship  to  consist  of  substantial  and  responsible  units. 
Newfoundland  remains  a  harmless  anomaly,  but 
four  Newfoundlands  sitting  at  a  table  with  four 
Great  Britains  would  go  far  to  rob  the  proceedings 
of  reality.  If  the  greater  Allies  could  not  bring 
themselves  during  the  war  to  consult  their  smaller 
confederates,  such  as  Serbia,  on  issues  of  policy, 
like  the  Italian  Treaty,  which  vitally  affected  them, 
it  is  not  to  be  expected  that,  under  the  much  looser 
and  more  self-regarding  conditions  of  post-war 
politics,  the  Great  Powers  will  put  their  cards  on  the 
table  in  the  presence  of  Spain,  Brazil,  and  China, 
or  even  of  Belgium.  The  admission  of  the  smaller 
Powers,  whether  it  was  a  concession  to  principle  or 
to  camouflage,  has  certainly  been  an  important, 
perhaps  a  determining  factor  in  preventing  the 
Council  from  even  being  allowed  to  attempt  the 
policy-making  function  which  was  in  the  mind  of 
its  original  designers. 

What  is  the  nature  of  the  new  activities  which  it 
has  made  for  itself?  It  may  perhaps  best  be 
described,  in  brief,  as  a  sort  of  international  House 
of  Lords,  or  Conference  of  Elder  Statesmen.  It  is 
peculiarly  adapted  for  dealing  with  questions  which 
are,  on  the  one  hand,  too  tangled  and  political,  too 
non-judiciable,  to  be  handed  over  to  the  Court  and, 
on  the  other,  sufficiently  compact,  sufficiently 
detached  or  detachable,  from  popular  or  party  pas- 

140 


THE  OUTLOOK 

sion,  to  be  remitted  to  an  international  authority 
with  good  hope  that  its  judgment  will  be  accepted 
as  final.  The  decision  to  ask  the  Council  to  adjudi- 
cate on  the  Upper  Silesian  question  marked  a  turning 
point  in  its  development.  It  beckoned  it  away  from 
the  field  of  policy,  where  it  can  never  hope  to  shine, 
on  to  that  intermediate  region,  half-judicial,  half- 
political,  of  the  processes  variously  known  as 
negotiation,  mediation,  and  arbitration.  That  there 
was  a  certain  element  of  camouflage  in  entrusting 
the  fate  of  a  Central  European  province  to  a  body 
so  curiously  and  even  accidentally  composed  may 
be  admitted;  but  the  first-hand  information  and 
experience  available  at  their  service  in  the  Secretariat 
and  elsewhere  no  doubt  served  to  supplement  the 
knowledge,  without  impairing  the  detachment,  of  the 
Belgian,  Brazilian,  Chinese,  and  Spanish  representa- 
tives who  were  asked  to  draw  up  the  first  report  for 
their  more  immediately  interested  colleagues. 

Of  the  Court,  now  finally  constituted,  little  need 
be  said.  Its  activities  cover  the  sphere  of  questions 
either  directly  remitted  to  it  as  justiciable  or  referred 
to  it  automatically  as  a  result  of  definite  treaty 
agreements.  This  sphere  does  not  as  yet  include 
the  larger  and  deeper  issues  which  still  divide  the 
leading  peoples  and  groupings  of  mankind.  To  take 
but  a  single  instance,  there  is  on  the  new  Bench  but 
one  representative  of  the  Far  Eastern  and  none  of 

141 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

the  Indian  or  African  peoples.  Even  if  therefore 
it  were  able  to  deliver,  on  some  issue  of  the  colour 
question,  the  justest  judgment  which  the  wit  of 
man  could  devise,  what  hope  is  there  that  the  non- 
white  peoples  would  bow  willingly  before  such  a 
decision?  The  deepest  issues  which  arise  between 
nation  and  nation,  race  and  race,  as  between  indi- 
vidual men  and  women,  transcend  the  power  of 
judge  and  court,  of  rule  and  precedent,  to  deter- 
mine. This  is  not  to  decry  the  prestige  or  authority 
of  the  new  creation,  which  fills  an  important  and 
indeed  indispensable  place  in  the  organized  human 
scheme,  but  only  to  remind  the  idealists,  always 
apt  to  court  disillusionment  by  pitching  their  con- 
crete expectations  too  high,  that  politics  are  but 
the  outward  and  over-simplified  expression  of  deep- 
lying  passions  and  traditions  which  have  not  yet 
been  touched  and  transfigured  by  the  harmonizing 
power  of  human  reason. 

But  by  far  the  most  hopeful  and  vftal  creation 
of  the  authors  of  the  Covenant  is  the  Secretariat. 
For  the  first  time  in  human  history  there  is  a  body 
of  men,  drawn  from  the  peoples  and  races  of  five 
continents,  dedicated  to  the  service,  not  of  this  or 
that  state  or  sectional  grouping,  but  of  mankind. 
To  have  created  an  International  Civil  Service, 
animated,  as  this  is,  by  a  single  world-purpose,  is 
a  greater  achievement  by  far  than  to  have  established 

142 


THE  OUTLOOK 

an  International  Court  of  Justice;  for  a  Court  can 
only  adjudicate  on  what  is  submitted  to  it,  whilst 
an  administrative  service,  with  the  health,  the  trans- 
port, and  a  number  of  other  vital  and  complex  but 
relatively  non-contentious  matters  under  its  charge, 
works  on  steadily  and  quietly  day  by  day.  weaving 
into  a  single  and  harmonious  pattern  the  great 
permanent  common  interests  of  mankind.  At  last 
the  res  puhlka,  the  Commonwealth  of  Men.  has  the 
ministering  spirits  at  its  service,  for  the  lack  of 
which  men  in  their  separate  groupings  have  waged 
an  unequal  fight  through  the  ages  against  disease 
and  distance  and  ignorance  and  many  another 
inveterate  enemy  of  mankind.  Whatever  may  be 
the  fate  of  the  Assembly,  whether  it  perfects  its 
organization  by  the  inclusion  of  the  United  States, 
Germany,  and  Russia  or  whether  it  becomes  more 
and  more  a  purely  European  and  West  Asiatic  body, 
supplemented  by  similar  regional  groupings  in 
America  and  elsewhere,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  Secretariat,  like  the  Court,  even  more  than  the 
Court,  must  and  will  remain  as  an  indispensable 
instrumentality  of  world-wide  co-operation  and 
administration. 

How  then,  in  the  absence  of  a  League  of  Nations 
or  a  Holy  Alliance,  are  the  collective  affairs  of 
Europe  to  be  regulated?  What  is  it  that  takes  the 
place,  in  post-war  Europe,  of  the  pre-war  Concert 

143 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

of  the  Powers?  In  order  to  answer  this  question 
in  the  present,  and  to  suggest  an  answer  for  the 
future,  a  frank  and  somewhat  detailed  discussion 
is  needed. 

The  control  of  European  policy,  in  so  far  as  it  is 
collectively  controlled  at  all,  has  been  vested  since 
the  armistice,  and  is  still  vested,  in  the  Supreme 
Council  of  the  Allies.  This  body,  which  has  lasted 
on  from  the  war  periods,  is  composed  of  the  Prime 
Ministers  of  Britain,  France,  and  Italy,  the  three 
victorious  out  of  the  four  remaining  European 
Great  Powers,  together,  since  last  June,  with  an 
American  "observer."  It  meets  at  irregular  intervals, 
now  in  Paris,  now  in  London,  now  at  S.  Remo, 
or  the  French  Riviera,  generally  when  some  definite 
question,  or  group  of  questions,  relating  to  the  Peace 
Treaties  is  in  urgent  need  of  settlement.  During 
the  intervals  between  these  meetings  the  execution 
of  its  decisions,  and  the  settlement  of  any  lesser 
questions  that  may  arise,  is  in  the  hands  of  a  Council 
of  the  Ambassadors  of  the  same  three  Powers, 
which  has  its  seat  in  Paris.  In  so  far,  therefore, 
as  this  fragmentary  and  provisional  European  Con- 
cert has  any  standing  organ  at  all,  it  is  to  be  found 
in  the  Council  of  Ambassadors;  and  it  is  to  this 
body,  for  instance,  and  not  to  the  League  of  Nations 
(which  is  only  concerned  with  the  Peace  Treaties  in 
cases  where  definite  tasks  have  been  remitted  to  it, 

144 


THE  OUTLOOK 

as  with  Danzig  and  the  Saar  Basin)  that  the  Czecho- 
slovak government,  always  so  scrupulously  correct, 
addressed  its  communications  drawing  attention  to 
the  disturbed  conditions  in  the  Austro-Hungarian 
frontier  lands. 

But  it  is  only  by  courtesy  that  the  Supreme 
Council,  in  its  present  form,  can  be  described  as  a 
true  Concert,  or  a  European  authority  at  all.  Its 
shortcomings  in  this  respect  are  manifest.  To 
begin  with,  it  lives  on  simply  by  the  momentum  of 
the  war-period,  which  is  visibly  giving  out  as  the 
memory  of  the  great  common  struggle  grows  dim. 
It  is  based  neither  on  a  written  alliance  or  agreement 
nor  on  any  clear  common  aim,  policy,  or  outlook. 
Its  declared  purpose  is  indeed  to  watch  over  the 
execution  of  the  Treaties  negotiated,  or  rather 
dictated  under  its  auspices.  But  the  three  partners 
are  at  one  neither  as  regards  the  importance  to  be 
attached  to  the  strict  observance  of  the  various 
Treaties  nor  as  to  the  sanctions  to  be  applied  in  case 
of  default.  Their  association  during  the  past  three 
years  has  been  a  study  in  contrasts  rather  than  in 
harmony;  and,  so  far  from  exhibiting  to  the  rest 
of  Europe,  and  especially  to  the  newly-created  states, 
the  spectacle  of  an  unselfish  and  responsible  co- 
operation in  the  interests  of  the  Continent  as  a 
whole,  it  has  made  all  the  world  aware  of  the  pro- 
found dififerences  of  outlook  and  interest  which 
10  145 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

render  such  a  co-operation,  under  present  conditions 
of  leadership  at  any  rate,  an  unattainable  ideal.  It 
is  between  Britain  and  France,  in  particular,  that 
these  differences  have  come  to  a  head,  for  Italy  is 
less  closely  concerned  with  the  problems  of  the 
German  Treaty  which  form  the  main  substance  of 
controversy.  The  two  Powers  have  drifted,  after 
a  long  course  of  argument  and  recrimination,  into 
a  condition  of  mutual  distrust  and  ill-temper  which, 
although  confined  indeed  to  comparatively  limited 
circles  in  each,  is  none  the  less  a  serious  menace 
both  to  the  two  peoples  themselves  and  to  the 
stability  of  Europe. 

For,  if  Anglo-French  co-operation  is  merely  a 
provisional  arrangement,  without  any  written  sanc- 
tion, to  back  it  up,  it  is  nevertheless  the  main,  indeed 
almost  the  only  effective  authority  which  is  available 
at  this  moment  to  maintain  the  precarious  structure 
of  European  peace.  No  one  who  has  travelled  in 
Central  and  Eastern  Europe  can  doubt  that,  were  a 
definite  rupture  to  occur  between  the  two  countries, 
the  effect  would  be  immediately  disastrous.  It  would 
give  new  hope  to  reactionary  elements  throughout 
the  Continent,  in  Berlin  and  Munich,  in  Reichenberg 
and  Zagreb,  in  Buda-Pesth  and  Sofia;  and  it  would 
almost  certainly  be  followed  by  a  concerted  attempt 
to  alter  by  force  the  territorial  arrangement  estab- 
lished in  the  Peace  Treaties.     English  liberals  who, 

146 


THE  OUTLOOK 

with  traditional   naivete  and  want  of  imagination, 
imagine  that  they  are  serving  the  cause  of  European 
peace  by  rating  and  scolding  a  tender  and  susceptible 
neighbour,  might  pause  to  reflect,  before  the  wound- 
ing adjective  slips  off  their  pen,  that  it  is  the  associa- 
tion between  Britain  and  France,  and  that  alone, 
which  protects  Europe  at  this  moment  from  a  con- 
tinuance of  the  agelong  racial  struggle  between  the 
German  and  Magyar  and  Slav  and  Roumanian  for 
which  so  many  reckless  spirits  are  thirsting  from 
the  Rhine  to  the  Carpathians  and  the  Adriatic.   Not 
that  the  Supreme  Council  is  all-powerful.     It  has 
proved  powerless  to  protect  Armenia,  or  to  coerce 
Russia,  or  to  prevent  the  outbreak  of  a  fresh  war 
between  Greece  and  Turkey,  or  to  eject  Zeligowski 
from  Vilna.     Its  effective  authority  extends   only 
over  Western  and  Central  Europe  and  suffers  palpa- 
ble diminution  in  proportion  as  it  attempts  to  move 
eastward,  beyond  the  range  where  French  military 
power  or  the  pressure  of  a  British  blockade  can 
exercise  effective  compulsion.    Nevertheless,  limited 
though  its  authority  may  be,  far  more  limited  than 
it  would  have  been  had  Eastern  Europe  been  bound 
to  the  West  by  a  firm  link  of  international  credit- 
power,     it    suffices     in    present    circumstances    to 
maintain  a  provisional  stability  and  to  give  the  new 
Europe,  the  Europe  of  the  Treaties,  time  to  harden 
and  crystallize. 

147 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

Before  asking  how  a  true  concert  can  be  formed 
or  reshaped,  let  us  glance  for  a  moment  at  this  new 
Europe.  Three  features  strike  the  eye  at  once. 
Firstly,  the  old  multi-national  Empires,  Austria- 
Hungary,  Turkey,  and  Russia,  have  disappeared,  if 
in  the  last  case  only  temporarily,  from  the  European 
scene.  Secondly,  the  European  states  correspond, 
not  indeed  perfectly  but  far  more  completely  than 
before  the  war,  to  the  lines  of  demarcation  between 
nation  and  nation,  the  change  bringing  into  existence 
no  less  than  six  wholly  new  states,  Poland,  Czecho- 
slovakia, Lithuania,  Latvia,  Esthonia,  and  Finland, 
and  three  which  are  virtually  new  creations,  Jugo- 
slavia, Austria,  and  Hungary.  Thirdly,  with  the 
diminution  in  the  number  and  authority  of  the 
Great  Powers,  what  may  be  called  the  medium-sized 
Powers,  substantial  units  of  territory  such  as  Poland 
and  Jugo-Slavia,  or  highly  developed  industrial 
regions  such  as  Belgium  and  Czecho-Slovakia  are 
destined  to  exercise  a  considerably  greater  relative 
influence  than  under  the  old  pre-war  conditions.  In 
1 9 14  (excluding  Lilliputian  communities  like 
Monaco)  there  were  nineteen  sovereign  states  in 
Europe,  out  of  which  six  were  Great  Powers ;  to-day 
there  are  twenty-five,  with  four  Great  Powers,  in- 
cluding Germany,  whose  effective  military  and 
economic  power  is  subject  to  numerous  disabilities. 

How  is  this  Europe  bound  together?  Three  dif- 
148 


THE  OUTLOOK 

ferent    and,    in    some    degree,    competing    sets    of 
arrangements  are  at  present  regulating  the  mutual 
relations  of  its  members.     In  the  first  place,  there 
is  the  Covenant  of  the  League  of  Nations  which 
the  overwhelming  majority  of  the  European  states 
are  pledged  to  observe.    Under  this  they  are  bound, 
firstly  not  to  make  war  upon  one  another  without 
recourse   to   a   procedure    involving   publicity    and 
delay;  secondly  to  take  some  action  (not  necessarily 
either  military  or  economic)  to  preserve  the  terri- 
torial integrity  and  independence  of  their   fellow- 
members.      Under    present    conditions,    when    the 
League  has  as  yet  had  little  chance  to  acquire  either 
the  moral  authority  or  the  economic  leverage  which 
it  may  hope  to  wield  in  future  years  these  obliga- 
tions do  not  constitute  so  weighty  a  factor  as  they 
should  in  the  life  of  Europe;  and  recent  discussions, 
at  Washington  as  at  Cannes,  and  in  East  Central 
Europe,  have  shown  how  states,  anxious  for  their 
security,   exhibit  a  preference   for  regional   agree- 
ments,  however   weak   the   obligation   involved   in 
them,  over  the  widely  scattered  guarantees  afforded 
by  Article  X.     No  case  has  indeed  as  yet  occurred 
in  Europe,  as  it  lias  in  Central  America,  in  which 
two  members  of  the  League,  completely  unmindful 
of    the    Covenant,    have    actually    embarked    upon 
regular  hostilities  with  one  another;  but  the  recent 
boundary  dispute  between  Jugo-Slavia  and  Albania, 

149 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

whatever  the  character  of  the  fighting,  did  not  fall 
far  short  of  this.  Already,  however,  weak  and 
necessitous  states  like  Austria  have  become  painfully 
dependent  on  the  good  graces  of  the  League,  and,  if 
the  projected  credit  scheme  takes  shape,  it  may  prove 
to  be  an  agency  of  potential  pressure  as  well  as  of 
relief,  and  thus  arm  the  League  with  some  rough 
kind  of  sanction  or  control.  But  this,  of  course, 
will,  at  best,  be  true  only  of  the  smaller  and  more 
helpless  members  of  what,  despite  the  boasted 
doctrine  of  the  Equality  of  Sovereign  States,  is  in 
reality  destined  to  be  either  an  aristocracy  of  the 
Great,  or  a  bourgeoisie  of  the  larger  and  medium- 
sized  Powers.  For  a  true  international  democracy, 
in  the  sense  of  a  regime  of  equal  consideration  for 
all  states  irrespective  of  their  size  and  strength,  we 
must  wait  until  force,  whether  political  or  economic, 
has  been  eliminated  from  the  field  of  international 
dealing. 

The  second  set  of  arrangements  are  the  Peace 
Treaties,  which,  despite  the  arbitrary  manner  in 
which  they  were  presented  for  signature  to  the 
enemy  states,  regulate  so  large  a  number  of  matters 
in  the  life  of  the  recent  belligerents,  from  armies 
and  frontiers  to  waterways  and  labour  conditions, 
as  to  be  not  undeserving  of  the  description,  recently 
applied  to  them  by  a  Czecho-Slovak  statesman,  as 
the  charter  of  the  new  Europe.     They  are  indeed 

150 


THE  OUTLOOK 

open  to  serious  criticism,  in  their  economic  rather 
than  in  their  territorial  clauses;  but  the  most 
important  defect,  or  limitation,  in  their  scope,  from 
the  point  of  view  which  we  are  now  considering, 
is  that,  apart  from  the  clauses  in  the  Covenant  to 
which  allusion  has  just  been  made,  they  make  no 
adequate  provision  for  their  own  continuing 
enforcement. 

It  is  this  which  has  led  to  the  third  set  of  arrange- 
ments, those  embodying  definite  treaty  obligations 
between  separate  Powers.  The  most  important  of 
these  is  one  which,  just  because  it  never  grew  from 
being  a  project  of  a  Treaty  into  being  a  Treaty, 
forms  the  most  striking  illustration  of  the  problem 
which  it  was  designed  to  meet — the  Treaty  proposed 
by  Mr.  Lloyd  George  and  President  Wilson  to  M. 
Clemenceau  as  a  guarantee  against  an  unprovoked 
German  aggression.  When  the  joint  guarantee  broke 
down  owing  to  non-ratification  by  the  United  States, 
and  Britain  declared  herself  unable  to  assume  the 
burden  alone,  France  turned  elsewhere  and  concluded 
a  convention  with  Belgium  which  forms  at  the 
moment  the  sole  assured  international  military  pro- 
tection of  her  oft-invaded  Eastern  frontier.  Parallel 
to  this,  as  a  sanction  of  the  Austrian,  as  the  Franco- 
Belgian  Treaty  is  of  the  German  settlement,  are 
the  political  and  military  arrangements  concluded 
between   Czecho-Slovakia,   Jugo-Slavia,   and    Rou- 

151 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

mania,  collectively  known  as  the  Little  Entente. 
Besides  this,  Britain  has  a  Treaty  with  Portugal, 
dating  from  long  before  the  war,  and  Czecho- 
slovakia a  treaty  with  Poland. 

Such  is  the  present  political  organization  of 
Europe — a  big  unfinished  design,  supplemented,  and 
in  part  replaced,  by  patchwork  improvisation.  What 
is  the  outlook  for  the  future?  In  what  direction 
are  we  to  look  for  a  consistent  and  comprehensive 
alteration  in  what  must  be  now  admitted  to  be  an 
impracticable  design  ? 

The  present  writer  believes  that  a  solution  of  these 
perplexities  and  complications  can  be  found  in  one 
way  alone,  along  the  simple  and  well-tried  road  of 
the  old  Concert  of  the  European  Powers.  Europe 
has  not  been  saved  from  the  West,  nor  yet  from  the 
East,  as  was  hoped  by  two  opposing  sets  of  idealists. 
America  and  Russia,  each  in  their  own  way,  may 
yet  return  to  play  their  part  in  the  life  of  the  old 
Continent.  For  present  purposes,  however,  we  must 
rule  them  out.  Europe  will  be  wise  to  adapt  to  her 
own  case  the  old  Italian  motto :  Europa  fara  da  se. 
She  must  look  to  her  own  healing.  Then  perchance 
others,  who  seem  at  present  to  look  on,  kindly  but 
unhelpful,  from  afar  will  find  the  will  and  the  means 
to  co-operate.  And  the  healing  must  begin  where 
the  wound  is  deepest,  from  the  Western  end 
of  the  Continent.    The  goal  of  all  good  Europeans 

152 


THE  OUTLOOK 

at  this  juncture  should  be  to  work  for  the  estabHsh- 
ment  of  relations  of  mutual  confidence  between 
Britain,  France,  and  Germany. 

If  this  can  be  achieved,  Europe  will  recuperate 
her  strength  in  security  and  the  League  of  Nations 
will  find  the  main  obstacle  to  its  growth  removed 
and  will  deepen  its  roots  and  spread  its  branches. 
Let  the  idealists  who  pin  their  faith  to  the  League, 
and  the  realists  who  make  light  of  it  because  they 
know  how  powerless  any  mere  organization  must 
ever  be  to  combat  the  fears  and  suspicions  which 
still  poison  the  life  of  Europe,  join  hands  in  attempt- 
ing to  solve  what  has  been  the  major  problem  of 
European  politics  during  the  last  three  years,  and 
during  the  fifty  years  which  preceded  them. 

It  is  not  an  insoluble  problem.  All  three  nations, 
indeed,  if  they  could  give  expression  to  their  deepest 
thought,  desire  ardently  and  wholeheartedly  to  solve 
it.  Especially  is  this  true  of  the  two  most  closely 
interested  of  the  three  peoples,  who,  in  their  broad 
masses  at  any  rate,  are  weary  of  the  eternal  vicis- 
situdes of  armed  conflict  which  have  clouded  their 
serenity  and  worn  out  their  energies  ever  since 
Caesar  encountered  the  German  chieftain  from 
across  the  Rhine.  It  is  not  the  desire  for  a  solution 
that  is  lacking — it  is  the  understanding — the  mutual 
understanding  of  moods  and  motives,  of  deep-lying 
passions  and  unspoken  philosophies  which  alone  can 

153 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

bring  harmony  into  the  relations  of  two  anguished 
and  tortured  peoples.  If  the  difficulty  were  super- 
ficial, it  could  be  easily  solved,  and  might  as  easily 
recur.  Just  because  it  is  agelong  and  inveterate, 
compounded  of  traditional  passions  and  of  ancient 
and  recent  sufferings,  it  needs  a  deeper  analysis  for 
its  healing.  But  it  is  precisely  because,  as  a  result  of 
the  war,  such  an  analysis  is  at  last  possible,  because 
submerged  dispositions  have  become  manifest  and 
hidden  fears  have  been  justified  by  horrid  facts,  that 
such  a  healing  is  at  last  within  the  range  of  practical 
politics. 

Let  us  look  at  the  case  of  France,  for  a 
right  understanding  of  her  nature  is  the  master  key 
to  the  problem.  "France  has  lost  ground  with  both 
British  and  American  opinion  at  Paris,"  wrote  two 
years  ago  an  English  observer  who  had  unusual 
opportunities  for  witnessing  the  work  of  the  Paris 
Conference  from  within,  "but  the  fault  lies  largely 
with  us.  If  by  lack  of  understanding  we  fail  to 
evoke  French  genius  and  French  political  imagina- 
tion in  building  up  the  new  Europe,  no  other  gains 
that  we  may  make,  not  even,  if  we  may  pause  to 
underline  the  thought  implicit  behind  the  words, 
a  perfected  League  of  Nations  or  a  firm  union  of 
the  English-speaking  peoples,  can  compensate  us  for 
that  supreme  loss."^     The  statement,  or  rather  the 

^  The  Responsibilities  of  the  League,  by  Eustace  Percy,  p.  125. 
154 


THE  OUTLOOK 

prediction,  here  expressed  has  been  only  too  painfully 
fulfilled.  During  the  last  three  years  Britain  and 
America,  more  particularly  Britain,  have  not  under- 
stood, have  seemed  not  even  to  be  trying  to  under- 
stand, the  mind  or  mood  of  France.  As  a  result, 
France,  discouraged  and  resentful,  has  failed  to  exert 
her  incomparable  gifts  of  interpretation  and  under- 
standing in  the  building  up  of  the  new  Europe.  And, 
as  a  further  result,  we  see  the  Europe  that  we  see,  a 
ship  adrift  in  heavy  seas,  with  no  visible  helmsman. 
Why  does  not  France  join  wholeheartedly  in  the 
Anglo-Saxon  project  of  the  League  of  Nations? 
Why  is  she  a  perpetual  obstacle  to  policies  and  pro- 
posals, such  as  a  general  measure  of  military  and 
naval  disarmament  or  the  admission  of  Germany  to 
the  League  of  Nations,  which  seem,  to  the  British 
mind,  normal  and  necessary  steps  towards  the  re- 
cuperation and  stabilization  of  Europe  ?  The  answer 
may  be  given  in  three  words,  fear,  indignation,  and 
suspicion.  Twice  invaded  within  fifty  years,  France 
fears  for  the  security  of  her  Eastern  frontier. 
Watching  the  trend  of  recent  British  policy  towards 
Germany,  which  seems  to  her,  and  to  her  not  alone 
on  the  Continent,  a  nauseating  compound  of  senti- 
mentality and  commercialism,  and  confronted  with 
the  nerve-racking  spectacle  of  her  own  ravaged 
departments,  she  is  driven  by  reaction  to  evoke  and 
cherish,  as  a  possession  not  now  to  be  shared  with 

155 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

her  former  Allies,  the  moral  indignation  which  to 
her  sensitive  spirit  is  no  more  than  a  just  and  neces- 
sary tribute  to  the  heroic  dead.  Finally,  faced  with 
the  disillusionment  resulting  from  the  constitutional 
complexities  of  American  and  the  opportunist 
vicissitudes  of  present-day  British  political  life,  her 
confidence  in  the  English-speaking  peoples  has  been 
rudely  shaken  and  the  old  seed  of  suspicion  of 
per  fide  Albion  has  once  more  found  a  lodgment  in 
her  mind.  Find  the  means  to  allay  that  fear,  open 
a  broad  European  channel  for  that  noble  indignation, 
remove  the  rankling  causes  of  that  poisonous 
mistrust,  and  France  will  once  more  resume  her 
normal  place  and  poise  as  the  main  element  of 
reason  and  harmony  and  proportion  in  the  many- 
sided  life  of  the  European  peoples. 

How  can  that  fear  be  allayed  ?  The  remedy  lies 
with  Britain,  and  it  is  not  hard  to  find.  Not  once 
but  many  times  during  the  last  three  years  have 
British  statesmen  and  editors,  safely  ensconced 
behind  their  maritime  ramparts,  armed  with  a  naval 
predominance  any  discussion  of  which  was  ruled 
out  of  the  agenda  of  the  Peace  Conference  before- 
hand, assured  France  that  her  fears  were  groundless 
and  upbraided  her  for  "nervousness"  or  even  for 
"militarism."  Granted  that  French  fears  are  a 
hallucination,  assurances  proffered  under  such  con- 
ditions are  calculated  rather  to  exasperate  than  to 

156 


THE  OUTLOOK 

allay  it.  If  Britain  sincerely  desires  to  remove  the 
gnawing  fear  at  the  heart  of  France,  she  must  not 
merely  tell  her  old  Ally  that  she  has  no  need  to  fear, 
but  take  action  to  prove  it.  Up  to  the  present  such 
action  as  she  has  taken  has  seemed  to  the  logical 
French  mind  directly  to  belie  her  assurances.  When 
France  asked  that  the  Rhine  should  be  made  the 
permanent  military  frontier  of  Germany,  Britain 
and  America  refused  and  offered  instead  a  joint 
guarantee  against  an  unprovoked  German  attack. 
When  the  American  guarantee  failed  to  mature 
owing  to  the  action  of  the  Senate,  Britain  refused 
to  undertake  the  burden  alone.  Why  did  she  do 
so?  No  doubt  the  British  Premier  had  his  own 
reasons,  which,  whether  creditable  or  otherwise,  are 
readily  intelligible  to  anyone  familiar  with  the  course 
of  British  politics.  But  to  the  French  mind  the 
refusal  to  undertake  the  burden  of  the  Alliance  could 
only  mean  that  Britain,  whatever  her  assurances, 
regarded  a  new  Franco-German  war  as  a  con- 
tingency not  altogether  unlikely  to  take  place.  And 
French  statesmen  point  out,  with  some  justice,  that, 
as  a  result  of  a  war  in  which  France  has  suffered, 
and  suffered  horribly,  from  an  unprovoked  aggres- 
sion by  an  enemy  against  whom  she  and  her  friends 
were  insufficiently  guarded,  she  is  left  with  even 
less  assurances  of  support  from  Britain  than  she 
had  before.      In    19 14   her   Eastern    frontier   was 

157 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

protected,  firstly  by  the  neutrality  of  Belgium,  of 
which  Britain  was  an  individual  guarantor,  and 
secondly,  less  explicitly,  by  the  Grey-Cambon 
understanding.  To-day  Belgium  is  no  longer 
neutralized;  the  British  obligation  towards  Belgium 
has  fallen  to  the  ground,  and  Britain  has  no  obliga- 
tions towards  France  other  than  the  vague  and 
insubstantial  commitments  embodied  in  the  Cove- 
nant of  the  League  of  Nations.  To  the  French 
mind,  trained,  alas,  by  experience  to  measure 
co-operation  not  in  rhetorical  assurances  of  good 
will  but  in  army  corps  and  mobilization  orders,  the 
League  of  Nations  is  not  enough.  Britain  and 
France  are  at  least  alike  in  this,  that  they  both 
prefer  a  double  lock  to  their  door.  There  are  very 
few  Englishmen,  certainly  not  enough  to  form  a 
majority  in  any  constituency,  who  would  sleep 
soundly  in  their  beds  if  the  Covenant,  and  not  the 
Navy  also,  were  the  protection  of  their  island- 
fortress.  France,  with  a  more  vivid  and  poignant 
experience  of  invasion  than  a  few  scratches  from 
sea  or  air,  is  only  asking  for  the  same  double  system 
of  insurance.  If  we  believe,  as  others  believe  of 
ours,  that  her  demands  are  superfluous,  that  is 
surely  all  the  more  reason  for  acceding  to  them.  A 
declaration  of  British  readiness  to  sign  the  Guarantee 
Treaty  would  be  the  best  possible  answer  to  French, 
and  it  may  be  added  also  to  Belgian,  fears.     Surely 

158 


THE  OUTLOOK 

it  is  not  too  much  to  ask  that  after  their  peculiarly 
intimate  association  in  the  greatest  war  in  history, 
the  marks  of  which  remain  indelible  on  French  soil, 
France  and  Britain  should  be  bound  together,  under 
the  all-embracing  aegis  of  the  League  of  Nations, 
by  a  pact  recognized  as  constituting  as  fixed  and 
natural  and  stabilizing  an  influence  in  the  European 
scheme  as  the  old  association  between  Britain  and 
Portugal.  Such  a  guarantee  would  differ  from  the 
old-world  diplomatic  combinations  to  which  excep- 
tion is  rightly  taken  by  the  definiteness  of  its  terms 
and  the  limited  scope  of  its  obligations.  It  would 
not  be  available,  like  an  ordinary  alliance,  as  a 
means  for  covering  ambitious  designs  by  one  of  the 
parties  in  this  or  that  region  of  the  world,  or  as  a 
support  to  selfish  economic  policies;  and  those  who 
argue  that,  in  the  sphere  covered  by  its  obligations, 
the  distinction  between  defence  and  "aggression" 
may  in  practice  be  difficult  to  draw,  would  find  a 
convincing  answer  to  their  fears  if  they  were  better 
acquainted  with  the  true  attitude  of  France.  She 
seeks  no  new  gains  or  adventures  on  her  Eastern 
frontier.  All  she  seeks  is  to  hold  what  she  has  won 
and  to  guard  her  own  territory.  He  little  knows 
either  the  French  peasant  or  the  French  townsman 
who  thinks  that  aggression,  whether  open  or  con- 
cealed, against  Germany,  need  ever  be  feared  from 
their  country.     The  guarantee,   therefore,   so   far 

159 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

from  dividing  Europe  into  opposing  diplomatic 
camps,  would  be  a  true  security,  not  only  for  peace, 
but  for  serenity  of  mind,  and  would  promote,  rather 
than  impede,  the  establishment  of  a  tripartite 
understanding;  for  the  security  of  the  German 
Republic  against  the  militarist  hotheads  who  still 
seek  to  wreck  depends  upon  the  stability  of  the 
new  governments  in  East  Central  Europe,  and  upon 
the  Entente  of  the  Great  Powers  which  created  them. 
Britain,  France,  and  the  New  Germany  have  a  com- 
pelling common  interest,  of  which  the  wiser  heads 
are  everywhere  aware,  in  the  stabilization  of  the 
settlement  and  in  the  discouragement  of  policies  of 
adventure  or  revenge.  In  any  case,  however, 
whether  the  pact  is  signed  or  not,  France  may  rest 
assured  that  the  association,  of  which  the  Guarantee 
would  be  the  formal  expression,  exists  already  in 
the  hearts  of  thousands  of  individual  members  of 
the  two  countries,  who  will  carry  their  sense  of 
mutual  comradeship  and  obligation  with  them  to  the 
grave. 

Such  a  declaration  need  not  be  unconditional.  It 
could  be  coupled  with  a  general  policy  of  disarma- 
ment. British  statesmen  have  repeatedly  laid  stress 
on  the  efficacy  of  the  disarmament  clauses  of  the 
German  Treaty,  and,  despite  occasional  scares, 
French  opinion  is  now  disposed  to  accept  the  same 
view.    It  is  common  ground,  at  least  between  those 

i6o 


THE  OUTLOOK 

best  qualified  to  weigh  the  mihtary  facts,  that,  thanks 
to  the  military  commissions  of  control  provided  for 
in  the  Treaty,  Germany  is  for  the  present,  and  will 
be  for  some  years  to  come,  powerless  for  a  western 
aggression.  But  this  is  not  sufficient  to  allay  French 
fears,  still  less  to  justify  a  substantial  measure  of 
disarmament  on  the  French  side.  France  looks 
ahead  into  the  future,  she  contrasts  the  relative 
population  figures  of  the  two  countries,  and  she 
asks  herself  what  is  likely  to  happen  when  the  com- 
missions of  control  are  disbanded,  when  the  Rhine 
occupation  is  ended,  and  when,  in  the  course  of 
years,  a  forty  million  France  is  once  more  face  to 
face,  this  time  without  British  or  American  support, 
against  a  seventy  or  eighty  million  Germany.  Is  it 
any  wonder  that  she  should  look  eastwards,  among 
the  Slav  peoples,  or  even  to  Africa,  for  the  support 
so  ungenerously,  as  she  thinks,  withheld  her  from 
the  West?  Here  again  it  is  fear,  not  "imperialism," 
which  has  led  to  manifestations  of  French  activity, 
at  Warsaw  and  elsewhere,  which  have  served  to 
deepen  the  estrangements  between  Paris  and  London. 
France  feels  that  the  same  wilfully  uncomprehend- 
ingly  British  policy,  the  same  aggravatingly  self- 
righteous  professions  of  correctitude,  pursue  her  in 
the  East,  from  Danzig  to  Upper  Silesia,  as  on  the 
Western  frontier  of  her  hereditary  foe;  and  in  her 
nervous  exasperation  she  puts  herself  even  more  in 
II  i6i 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

the     wrong     with     her     impeccably     cool-headed 
neighbour. 

How  can  France  be  given  security  against  the 
re-arming  of  Germany  after  the  disbandment  of  the 
present  military  commissions  of  control?     Firstly, 
by  the   Guarantee   Treaty,   which   would  definitely 
throw  upon  the  British  Government  and  people  the 
obligation  of  enforcing  the  military  clauses  of  the 
Treaty,  especially  those  providing   for  the  demili- 
tarization of  the  Rhine  area  and  of  taking  concerted 
measures   with   their   French   Allies   to   secure   an 
adequate  margin  of  security.     If  it  be  urged  against 
this  that  it  might  involve  a  change  in  the  traditional 
British   military   system,   the   answer   is  that   such 
an  argument  is  itself  a  confession  that  the  German 
disarmament  laid  down  in  the  Treaty  is  likely  to 
prove  illusory,  and  that  the  French  fears  are  there- 
fore justified.     But  it  is  our  business,  as  much  as 
that  of  France,  to  see  that  the  Treaty  provisions  are 
maintained,  and  it  is  here  that  the  opening  is  pro- 
vided for  a  second  measure  of  security  in  the  estal> 
lishment  of  some  permanent  international  agency  to 
keep  watch  over  the  problem  of  armaments.     Such 
a  measure  is  foreshadowed  in  two  articles  of  the 
Covenant.     Article   I.   lays  down  that  every  state 
admitted  to  membership  of  the  League  after  the 
first  batch  of  "original  members,"  "shall  accept  such 
regulations  as  may  be  prescribed  by  the  League  in 

162 


THE  OUTLOOK 

regard  to  its  military  and  naval  forces  and  arma- 
ments," and  Article  IX.  provides  that  "a  permanent 
Commission  shall  be  constituted  to  advise  the  Council 
on  the  execution  of  Articles  I.  and  VIII."  (the 
limitation  of  armaments  clause)  "and  on  military, 
naval,  and  air  questions  generally."  Such  an 
authority  would  need  to  be  equipped  to  report  not 
only  on  the  strictly  military,  but  on  industrial 
measures  of  mobilization.  No  European  govern- 
ment, after  the  experience  of  this  war,  is  likely  to 
embark  on  hostilities  until  it  has  amassed,  not  merely 
the  munitions,  but  the  industrial  raw  materials 
needed  for  a  successful  issue — unless,  indeed,  it  is 
so  wilfully  perverse,  or  so  blinded  by  a  desire  for 
revenge,  as  deliberately  to  run  amok.  Secret  pre- 
parations for  war,  therefore,  except  for  an  air 
offensive,  with  chemical  gases,  against  which  neither 
greater  nor  lesser  precautions  can  avail,  are  even 
less  possible  than  they  were  before  1914.  when  the 
intelligence  departments  proved  to  be  not  ill-informed 
as  to  the  main  facts.  The  establishment  of  some 
such  body  as  that  contemplated  in  Article  IX.  would 
go  far  to  allay  the  apprehensions,  not  of  France  only, 
but  of  the  other  powers,  such  as  Czecho-Slovakia 
and  Jugo-SIavia,  who  have  equal  and  even  greater 
reason  to  fear  possible  aggression  from  untrust- 
worthy and  revengeful  neighbours.  It  is  true  that, 
as  became  clear  at  Washington,  a  general  programme 

163 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

of  European  military  disarmament  cannot  be 
adopted  until  Russia  has  been  brought  into  line,  and 
the  Hungarian  situation  gives  the  other  Succession 
States  more  ground  for  confidence,  but  there  is 
no  reason  why  the  project  for  an  international 
commission  of  control  should  not  be  adopted 
independently  of  any  subsequent  programme  of 
limitation.  Such  a  programme  already  exists  in 
the  Treaties  for  four  European  states. 

A  third  measure  of  security  could  be  given  by 
Britain  to  France  by  the  perfecting,  within  the 
limits  lately  agreed  upon  as  legitimate,  of  the 
offensive  activities  of  our  sea-power.  If  Frenchmen 
habitually  look  to  British  divisions  rather  than  to 
British  destroyers  as  the  effective  instrument  of 
common  defence,  every  German  knows  that  it  is  the 
British  Navy  which,  in  the  last  analysis,  has  the 
stranglehold  over  his  country's  life.  There  is  no 
doubt  in  any  Englishman's  mind  that  were  France 
once  more  to  be  the  victim  of  an  unprovoked  attack, 
such  power  would  be  used  to  the  full.  But  it  is  not 
enough  that  the  power  should  be  there  in  reserve. 
Both  the  French  and  the  Germans,  and,  let  it  be 
added,  their  recently  neutral  neighbours  should  be 
made  to  realize  that  it  is  there,  and  that  it  is  meant 
to  be  used.  The  course  of  Allied  policy  has  led  the 
public  opinion,  not  only  of  the  three  countries  most 
closely  interested  but  of  the  rest  of  the  world  also, 

164 


THE  OUTLOOK 

to  think  that  military  power,  and  in  the  main  French 
military  power,  is  the  only  available  sanction  against 
Treaty-breaking.  It  is  important  that  the  role  of 
the  Navies,  and  especially  of  the  leading  European 
Navy,  should  not  be  forgotten,  and  with  it,  let  it  be 
added,  the  political  responsibilities,  especially  in  the 
domain  of  commercial  policy,  which  the  possession 
of  such  inexorable  power  involves.  The  reader  who 
has  followed  the  underlying  argument  of  the  earlier 
part  of  this  volume  will  not  need  to  be  told  that  the 
British  Navy  is  like  a  magnet  set  up  to  draw 
Germany  steadily  towards  a  westward  orientation 
and  to  forbid  her  to  indulge  in  eastern  adventures  in 
which,  though  she  may  conquer  whole  kingdoms, 
she  risks  the  loss  of  her  connections  with  the  over- 
seas world  and  of  the  indispensable  elements  of 
civilization  and  livelihood  which  it  provides  for  her 
population. 

The  system  of  regional  agreements  for  mutual 
protection  between  naval  powers  lately  inaugurated 
at  Washington  should  be  extended  to  European 
w^aters,  with  which  Washington  was  powerless  to 
deal.  Were  this  done,  and  Malta,  Tunis,  and  Tripoli 
brought  within  a  pact  similar  to  that  which  now 
includes  Australia,  Formosa,  and  the  Philippines,  the 
memory  of  a  recent  unseemly  wrangle  at  Wash- 
ington would  be  obliterated,  and  the  chief  obstacle 
to  a  comprehensive  naval  disarmament  removed. 

165 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

So  much  for  French  fears.  We  pass  now  to  a 
more  subtle  and  intimate  subject,  the  moral  indigna- 
tion which  estranges  the  victim  from  the  wrongdoer. 
The  remedy  here  lies  mainly  on  the  German  side;  but 
there  is  something  that  can  be  said  in  this  place. 
Perhaps  the  greatest  of  all  the  many  psychological 
barriers  to  Franco-British  understanding  is  the  con- 
trast between  what  the  English  are  fond  of  calling 
"sportsmanship"  on  the  one  hand,  and  French 
sensitiveness  on  the  other.  The  rough,  good- 
humoured,  optimistic,  and  imperceptive  attitude  to- 
wards life  which  caused  the  British  soldier  to  endow 
his  German  foe,  in  the  opposing  trenches,  with  the 
innocuous  title  of  Fritz  is,  and  remains  more  than 
ever  after  five  years  of  comradeship,  a  mystery  to 
the  intense  and  deeply  patriotic  poilu,  who  sees  in 
the  Boche  the  barbarian  invader  and  defiler  of  his 
home.  It  may  be  said  at  once,  of  the  English  and 
the  French,  as  of  the  English  and  the  Irish,  that  the 
former  are  apt  to  forget  what  it  were  better  to 
remember  and  the  latter  to  remember  what  it  were 
better  to  forget.  But  the  French  have  an  especial 
spur  to  memory  which  is  denied  to  their  more 
oblivious  neighbours.  The  growth  of  a  kindly,  or 
even  a  calm,  sentiment  between  the  mass  of  the 
French  and  German  peoples  is  perpetually  impeded 
and  thrown  back  by  the  spectacle  of  the  devastated 
regions.     The  invaded  departments  are  too  closely 

l66 


THE  OUTLOOK 

linked  with  the  rest  of  the  Hfe  of  France,  both 
sentimentally  and  industrially,  for  the  wound  to 
exert  a  merely  local  influence  and  reaction.  The 
children  growing  up  amid  the  ruins  of  Rheims  and 
Arras  or  in  the  damp  and  draughty  shanties  which 
stand  for  home  in  Lens  and  Albert  and  Bapaume  and 
hundreds  of  equally  obliterated  villages  will  bear 
about  with  them  through  life  the  indelible  memories 
of  suffering  and  squalor  imprinted  on  their  infant 
sensibilities.  Nor,  in  a  land  like  France  where  the 
tradition  of  the  soil  and  the  homestead  counts  for  so 
much  in  the  heart  and  mind  both  of  peasant  and 
townsman,  are  the  uprooted  victims  of  the  invader, 
transplanted  to  Lyons  or  the  Loire  or  even  to  the 
all-engulfing  metropolis,  to  be  reckoned  in  happier 
case.  For  such  a  wound  no  real  healing  is  possible. 
Rheims  Cathedral,  the  Town  Hall  Square  of  Arras, 
like  the  Cloth  Hall  of  Ypres,  have  passed  for  ever 
into  history,  even  as  the  heroes  who  defended  them. 
But  at  least  there  can  be  reparation,  so  that  new 
life  may  spring  up  to  replace  the  old  and  the  busy 
hand  of  man  once  more  reawaken  and  revivify  the 
desolate  tract  which  for  four  long  years  marked 
the  boundary  of  freedom.  Reparation  to  France 
is  not  only,  or  mainly,  a  financial  problem.  It 
embodies  a  demand  of  human  justice  springing 
from  the  depth  of  the  French  soul.  When  the 
British  Premier,  aided  by  his  Australian  colleague, 

167 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

added  war-costs  to  the  Allied  claim,  he  was  not 
simply  trebling,  or  even  quadrupling,  the  total  till; 
he  was  mingling  two  tragically  different  elements  of 
nativity.  He  was  asking  for  Britain  and  Canada  and 
Australia,  for  India  and  Portugal  and  Brazil,  who 
had  known  nothing  of  the  long-drawn  shame  and 
anguish  of  enemy  occupation,  a  share  in  what  should 
have  been  regarded  as  an  almost  sacred,  if  in- 
adequate, tribute  of  recompense  to  the  innocent 
civilians  of  the  invaded  lands.  Until  this  aspect  of 
the  reparation  problem,  so  deep-felt  in  France  and 
yet  so  hard  to  state  to  an  outsider,  is  rated  at  its 
full  value  both  by  Britain  and  Germany,  the  soul 
of  France  will  continue  to  suffer  from  an  outraged 
sense  of  what  is,  at  bottom,  a  just  and  noble  indigna- 
tion. Perhaps  it  may  yet  prove  to  be  the  hidden 
blessing  in  the  ghastly  tragedy  of  Oppau  that  its 
crumbled  ruins  and  its  giant  crater,  with  their  stream 
of  stricken  refugees,  may  bring  home  to  dwellers  by 
the  Rhine  scenes  on  the  Somme  and  the  Aisne,  the 
Lys  and  the  Yser,  which  their  imaginations  had 
hitherto  been  too  weak  to  picture. 

The  third  element  in  what,  to  use  the  technical 
language  of  analysis,  we  may  term  the  French 
complex,  is  a  pervading  and  poisoning  mistrust. 
Here  it  is  best  to  be  frank,  however  distasteful 
the  task  may  be.  For  the  last  three  years,  ever  since 
the  peace  discussions  began,  French  statesmen  have 

i68 


THE  OUTLOOK 

been  engaged  in  constant  and  intricate  negotia- 
tions with  the  British  Premier.  The  result  of  these 
personal  contacts  is  that  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  to 
quote  the  words  of  an  unusually  balanced,  if  plain 
spoken,  British  journalist,  "is  hated  in  France  as 
no  Englishman  has  ever  been  hated. "^  This  hatred 
is  not  due  primarily  to  differences  of  policy.  Such 
differences  have  indeed,  during  the  last  year  at  any 
rate,  been  rather  the  result  than  the  cause  of  the 
personal  difficulty.  It  is  due  to  the  mistrust  and  the 
bewilderment  caused  by  the  tactics  of  a  politician 
who  seems  consistently  to  violate  the  rules  hitherto 
associated  by  the  French  mind  with  British  states- 
manship. Had  a  British  statesman  of  the  old  type, 
a  Gladstone,  a  Salisbury,  or  even  a  Milner — the 
Milner  who  was  brave  enough,  in  October,  191 8,  to 
issue  the  warning  against  the  disintegrating  possi- 
bilities of  a  German  revolution — been  in  office  at  the 
time  of  the  armistice,  the  conflict  of  policy  and 
temperament  would  have  been  acute;  but  France 
would  have  known  where  she  stood,  and  would  have 
received  from  Britain  what  she  expected,  the  firm 
and  sympathetic  guidance  of  a  generous  friend. 
But  to  have  been  led  by  British  statesmanship  along 
the  path  of  violence  and  revenge,  and  then  to  have 
watched  the  treacherous  guide,  his  own  immediate 
objectives  attacked,  craftily  turning  on  his  old  tracks 
^New  Statesman,  September  24,  1921. 
169 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

and  making  for  the  enemy's  camp,  has  proved  too 
exasperating  to  French  sensibility.  It  must  unfortu- 
nately be  set  down,  if  not  as  an  axiom  at  least  as  a 
preponderant  likelihood,  that  no  real  improvement 
in  Anglo-French  relations  can  be  looked  for  till  there 
is  a  change  in  the  British  premiership.  The  same 
is  true,  let  it  be  stated  at  once,  of  Anglo-German 
relations  also.  To  the  French  public  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  is  the  man  who,  having  engaged  to  try  the 
Kaiser  and  to  exact  the  uttermost  farthing  from 
the  Boche,  has  pocketed  most  of  the  German  colonies 
and  German  merchant  fleet  for  his  country,  and 
put  Britain's  chief  opposing  Navy  and  chief  trade 
competitor  out  of  the  way,  and  has  then  left  France, 
uncompensated  and  unsupported,  with  a  paper 
Treaty  as  her  chief  asset.  To  the  German  public  he 
is  and  remains  the  man  who,  having  declared,  under 
circumstances  of  unusual  solemnity,  that  the  war 
was  being  waged  against  Prussian  militarism  and 
not  against  the  future  of  the  German  people,  and 
having  pledged  his  country  to  make  peace  upon  the 
Wilson  basis,  is  responsible  for  a  Treaty  which 
completely  ignores  the  "equality  of  trade  condi- 
tions" provided  for  in  the  Fourteen  Points  and 
wiped  out,  generally  to  the  advantage  of  Britain, 
what  Germans  regarded  as  the  elementary  legal 
rights  of  their  traders  abroad.  For  the  wrong  done 
to  Germany  before  the  Treaty  was  signed,  and  the 

170 


THE  OUTLOOK 

wron^  done  to  France  since,  the  British  Premier 
will  not  easily  be  forgiven  from  either  side ;  on  this 
at  least  the  victims  of  blockade  and  invasion  are 
alike  agreed. 

We  are  not  concerned  in  this,  volume  with  personal 
questions  except  when,  as  in  this  case,  they  have 
an  important  bearing  on  European  policy.  David 
Lloyd  George  the  man  may  be  left  to  the  biogra- 
phers, who  will  do  justice,  one  may  be  sure,  to  the 
energy  and  resourcefulness,  the  unquenchable  vitality 
and  the  almost  uncanny  powers  of  receptiveness, 
intuition,  and  improvisation  which  go  together  to 
make  up  what,  but  for  no  added  touch  of  greatness, 
would  undoubtedly  deserve  the  name  of  genius. 
Greatness  indeed,  and  goodness  too,  lay  at  his  roots, 
and  were  nourished  by  his  early  Welsh  upbringing. 
But  when  the  soil  was  changed  the  plant,  for  all  its 
appearance  of  adaptability,  seems  to  have  lost  the 
best  of  its  native  quality.  Students  of  Wales  may 
see  in  the  Premier,  not  the  "greatest  living  Welsh- 
man," but  a  symbol  of  the  tragedy  of  their  country. 
Students  of  Europe  cannot  look  so  deep.  They 
can  only  take  regretful  note  that  one  who  might 
have  lived  in  history  for  service  rendered  in  a  plastic 
hour,  made  the  Great  Refusal  and  so  effaced  himself 
from  the  scene. 

We  may  now  pass  on  from  France  to  her  eastern 
neighbour.     The  case  of  Germany  is  graver,  but 

171 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

less  subtle  and  complex  than  that  of  France.  She, 
too,  endured  greatly  for  four  years  and  more  and 
emerged  from  the  war  nerve-racked,  exhausted, 
and  in  need  of  guidance.  But  whereas  the  problem 
for  France  was  to  heal  the  wounds  of  body  and 
mind  so  as  to  be  free  to  pick  up  the  threads  of  her 
old  life,  whether  in  the  fields  or  in  the  arts,  the 
problem  for  Germany  is  to  find  a  new  way  of  life 
altogether.  Germany  is  the  victim  of  a  complete 
breakdown — a  bankruptcy  of  all  that  to  which  her 
people  had  been,  or  thought  they  had  been,  attached 
for  fifty  years.  For  the  German,  both  by  tempera- 
ment and  by  added  training,  sees  his  life  and  the 
life  of  society,  as  part  of  a  general  scheme  or 
philosophy;  and  when  the  fabric  of  Bismarck 
collapsed,  its  whole  intellectual  and  moral  founda- 
tions were  involved  in  the  ruin.  At  the  impact  of  a 
fact  like  the  Bulgarian  armistice  into  the  ordered 
scheme  of  his  historical  thinking,  the  successor  of 
Treitschke  readjusted  his  whole  mental  furniture, 
and  the  sincerest  spokesman  of  the  old  order, 
Friedrich  Naumann,  told  the  parents  of  the  dead 
that  their  sons  had  fallen  to  close  an  epoch,  and  that 
a  new  age  demanded  new  tasks  and  a  new  outlook. 
So  much  he  was  privileged  to  see  before  a  merciful 
death  removed  him  from  the  scene.  His  country- 
men as  yet  have  seen  no  further.  If  the  question  be 
asked.  Whither  is  Germany  tending?  the  answer  is, 

172 


THE  OUTLOOK 

No  whither.  She  is  still  too  much  stupefied  and 
bewildered  by  the  catastrophe  which  has  befallen  her 
to  have  taken  her  bearings  or  laid  out  a  new  track. 
The  older  generation,  and  the  more  obstinate  and 
embittered  among  the  young,  are  indeed  harking 
back  to  the  old  banners;  but,  as  the  Kapp  Putsch 
and  recent  events  since  the  murder  of  Erzberger  have 
shown,  they  no  longer  possess  the  power  to  lead 
them  to  victory,  unless  some  large  European  change, 
such  as  a  rupture  between  France  and  Britain,  should 
open  the  way.  But  the  mass  are  Republicans.  They 
accept  the  new  order.  They  recognize  its  inevita- 
bility and  its  power  over  their  lives.  But  they  have 
as  yet  discovered  no  intellectual  or  political  initiation 
of  their  own.  Not,  indeed,  that  their  lack  of  con- 
viction is  due  to  a  failure  to  experiment  with  new 
philosophies.  In  the  autumn  of  1918  and  through 
the  early  w^inter,  until  it  became  clear  that  the  Allies 
were  letting  the  economic  situation  go  by  default,  all 
Germany  was  Wilsonian  and  the  Fourteen  Points 
were  quoted  and  commentarized  as  though  Washing- 
ton were  a  new  Sinai.  Later  on,  in  the  desperation 
of  a  workless  winter  when  the  blockade,  so  far  from 
being  relaxed,  was  even  extended  to  the  Baltic, 
the  Bolshevik  philosophy  had  its  brief  day  of  in- 
tellectual vogue.  But  the  failure  of  the  Munich 
experiment,  coupled  with  more  detailed  news  as  to 
the  actual  situation  at  Moscow,  soon  shepherded  the 

173 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

inquiring  flock  away  from  these  dangerous  pastures. 
Since  then,  compromise  and  political  improvisation 
have  been  the  order  of  the  day.  But  if  the  German 
is  still  doubtful  as  to  what  he  shall  think,  he  has 
found  relief  in  the  renewed  power  of  work.  Every 
month  puts  the  blockade  and  its  privations  further 
behind  him;  while,  raw  materials  once  purchased 
somehow,  the  exchange  rate  has  facilitated  the 
resumption  of  export  to  a  degree  exceeding  all  ex- 
pectations of  two  years  ago.  When  one  of  the 
earliest  British  writers  to  visit  Germany  after 
the  publication  of  the  peace  terms  declared  that 
the  Treaty  gave  Britain  the  power  to  "control  the 
world's  commerce,"  he  little  thought  that  within 
two  years  there  would  be  far  more  unemployment 
in  his  own  country  than  in  Germany.' 

So  far,  then,  as  ingrained  German  dispositions  are 
concerned,  there  is  no  reason  in  the  nature  of  things 
why  the  German  Republic  should  not  put  the  whole 
Wilhelmian  tradition,  with  its  methods  and  ambi- 
tions, aside  as  a  nightmare  and  enter  into  relations 
of  confidence  and  co-operation  with  France  and 
Britain,  particularly  with  France,  Psychologically, 
as  any  observer  can  test  for  himself  on  the  spot, 
France  and  Germany  were  intended  to  understand 
and  not  to  misunderstand  one  another.  Nature 
meant    them   to   co-operate,    not   to    collide.      The 

'  Brailsford,  Across  the  Blockade,  p.  150. 
174 


THE  OUTLOOK 

traveller  who  passes  from  the  pure  France,  through 
the  borderlands  of  Franco-German  culture,  whether 
in  the  redeemed  provinces  or  in  the  temporary 
French  area  of  occupation,  to  the  pure  Germany, 
is  conscious,  not  of  a  clash,  but  of  an  agreeable 
blending  of  cultures.  Alsace  and  Lorraine  are  not, 
like  Fermanagh  and  Tyrone,  the  meeting  place  of 
two  mutually  incomprehensibles,  nor  yet  like  the 
Welsh  Marches,  where  the  blending,  although  no 
longer  a  political  issue,  submerges,  rather  than  re- 
veals, the  best  of  both,  but  the  home  of  a  true  border- 
land people  who,  despite  their  French  allegiance,  now 
indelibly  fixed,  have  the  power  to  take  in  and  to 
radiate  forth,  in  characteristic  and  homely  fashion, 
the  influences  which  come  to  them  from  both  sides. 
Germany  has  owed  much  to  France,  from  the  Middle 
Ages  onwards,  and  France  in  her  turn,  whether  in 
music,  science,  or  scholarship,  has  owed  much,  of 
late  years  even  overmuch,  to  Germany.  It  is  politics 
and  politically  poisoned  "culture,"  and  these  alone, 
which  have  caused  the  tragic  misunderstanding 
which  both  sides,  and  the  world  as  a  whole,  have 
bhndly  accepted  as  an  imalterable  fact  in  the  life  of 
Europe. 

The  same,  if  in  lesser  degree,  is  true  of  the  rela- 
tions between  Germany  and  Britain.  If  culturally 
the  two  peoples  are  far  apart — for  the  North  Sea 
and  the  Channel  form  one  of  the  marked  cultural 

175 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

frontiers  of  the  world — racially  they  have  much  in 
common.  Racial  affinities  are  a  good  foundation 
for  mutual  intercourse,  and  it  is  not  surprising  that 
the  British  and  American  troops  in  the  Rhine  area 
should  have  been  pleasurably  surprised  to  become 
aware  of  them.  They  are,  however,  a  dangerous 
basis  for  political  co-operation,  unless  supplemented 
by  some  more  conscious  and  definite  understanding. 
The  difficulty  about  the  relations  between  Britain 
and  her  late  enemy  at  this  moment  is,  not  that  there 
is  a  want  of  contact,  but  that  superficial  contacts, 
facilitated  by  racial  affinity,  are  making  the  tripar- 
tite understanding,  wherein  lies  the  only  real  solu- 
tion, more  difficult  of  attainment  and  forming  a 
crust,  as  it  were,  over  an  unhealed  and  envenomed 
wound. 

For  the  German  disposition  with  which  France 
and  Britain  have  to  deal  is  not  normal,  or  simply 
convalescent  after  collapse  and  exhaustion,  but 
abnormal  and  outraged,  stung,  like  that  of  France, 
by  a  sense  of  justice  denied  and  of  continuing  wrong. 
The  publication  of  the  draft  terms  of  the  Treaty  in 
May,  1919,  put  a  sudden  end  to  German  Wilson- 
ianism,  and  to  the  sincere,  if  superficial,  mood  of 
receptiveness — penitence  would  be  too  strong  a  word 
— which  accompanied  it.  Isolated  for  over  four 
years  from  contact  with  the  opinion  of  the  outer 
world,   Germans   in  the   early  part  of    191 9  were 

176 


THE  OUTLOOK 

genuinely  surprised  to  discover  the  opinion  enter- 
tained about  them  by  the  mass  of  mankind,  and 
felt  conscientiously  constrained  to  begin  examining 
into  its  grounds.  But  the  truth,  as  revealed  in  the 
four  volumes  of  German  Foreign  Office  documents, 
and  in  the  damning  and  unanswerable  summary  of 
their  contents  published  by  Kautsky,  was  too  terrible 
for  all  but  the  most  courageous  of  minds  to  assimi- 
late, and  the  Treaty  not  only  gave  Germans  a 
substantial  grievance  of  their  own  in  compensation, 
but  opened  the  door  to  self-justificating  argument 
and  ingenuity  on  the  major  issue.  During  the  last 
two  and  more  years,  despite,  or  indeed  because  of, 
the  declaration  of  guilt  embodied  in  the  Peace 
Treaty,  German  opinion  has  once  more  hardened  in 
the  belief,  not  indeed  that  the  Allies,  or  any  one  of 
them,  caused  the  war,  but  that  it  "just  happened," 
like  a  disturbance  of  Nature,  or  that,  at  the  worst, 
the  responsibility  can  be  divided.  Every  kind  of 
rationalization,  to  use  the  technical  term  which  is 
applied  to  similar  processes  in  individual  mental 
cases,  is  used  to  support  this  latter  contention,  but 
that  the  patient  remains  unsatisfied,  that  the  problem 
of  German  responsibility  for  the  appalling  catastro- 
phe remains  a  grim  obsession  in  the  mind  of  most 
thinking  Germans,  is  manifest  from  the  constant 
output  of  literature  on  what  is  among  the  Allies  now 
an  outworn  subject,  and  becomes  still  more  evident 
"  177 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

to  anyone  who  has  had  occasion  to  discuss  the  issue 
with  Germans  face  to  face. 

It  is  vital  not  only  to  the  restoration  of  confidence 
between  France  and  Germany,  but  to  the  healing 
of  Germany  herself,  that  the  question  of  the 
responsibility  for  the  war  should  not  be  evaded  or 
glossed  over  with  frivolous  and  repugnant  amiabili- 
ties, but  faced  frankly  in  all  its  nakedness.  It  is  the 
only  means  to  the  recovery  of  German  serenity  and 
self-respect,  and  to  the  restoration  of  a  right  and 
honourable  relationship  l:>etween  the  German  people 
and  the  rest  of  civilized  mankind.  Nor,  difficult 
though  it  is  to  pin  individual  Germans  down  to  this 
issue,  as  difficult  as  for  a  psycho-analyst  to  bring  his 
patient  to  talk  of  his  hidden  wound,  does  it  tran- 
scend the  possibilities  of  sincere  and  sympathetic 
intercourse.  What  is  needed  above  all  is  an  in- 
crease of  personal  contacts  between  frank,  honest 
and  patriotic  spirits  on  either  side,  between  those 
w^ho  understand  what  love  of  country  means, 
and  what  anguish  is  involved  for  all  true  Germans 
in  the  thought  that  the  devotion  and  endurance  so 
prodigally  and  unquestioningly  rendered  against  a 
world  of  enemies  were  spent  on  an  evil  cause.  "Even 
if  I  were  convinced  by  what  you  tell  me,"  said  such 
a  true  lover  of  the  Fatherland  after  a  frank  discus- 
sion of  this  theme,  "I  could  not  say  so  to  you." 
Here,  on  the  ground  of  a  common  love  of  country, 

178 


THE  OUTLOOK 

of  a  uniting  and  reconciling  human  experience, 
rather  than  in  the  empty  rhetoric  of  cosmopohtanism, 
is  material  for  a  real  restoration  of  confidence  and 
even  of  friendship.  Not  to  forget  and  forgive,  but 
to  understand  and  forgive,  should  be  the  watchword 
of  both  parties  to  this  common  effort. 

Such  discussions  reveal  that  there  is  a  two-fold 
difficulty  to  be  overcome.  There  is,  firstly,  the  fact 
that  the  two  sides  are  working  from  two  different 
versions  of  the  historical  events,  the  German  version, 
in  the  writer's  view,  being  by  far  the  more  distorted 
and  incomplete,  partly  to  the  failure  on  the  German 
side  to  realize  the  direct,  in  this  case  the  awful, 
responsibility  of  the  individual  citizen  in  a  modern 
state  for  the  actions  of  his  government.  If,  as  the 
evidence  from  June,  19 14,  onwards,  proves  up  to 
the  hilt,  Germany  was  responsible  for  involving 
first  the  Balkans,  then  Europe,  then  almost  the 
whole  world,  in  the  greatest  war  in  history,  then 
the  Allied  peoples  are  right  in  feeling  that  not  the 
German  state  but  the  German  people,  men  and 
women  alike,  are  responsible  for  what  is  rightly 
described  in  the  Allies'  covering  letter  of  June,  1919, 
as  "the  greatest  crime  against  humanity  and  the 
freedom  of  peoples  that  any  nation,  calling  itself 
civilized,  has  ever  committed."  And  they  will  not 
feel  free  to  enter  into  real  relations  of  confidence 
with  their  late  enemies  until  they  have  received  more 

179 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

than  constrained  and  perfunctory  indications  of 
sorrow  and  remorse  on  the  German  side.  The 
public  occasion  may  yet  arise  when  some  convincing 
indication  of  this  kind  can  be  given.  In  the  mean- 
time it  is  in  the  more  intimate  region  of  personal 
contacts  that  the  reconciliation  must  begin. 

But  the  road  to  such  reconciliation  is  impeded 
and  blocked  up  by  the  injustice  of  which  Germany 
has  a  right  to  complain  in  the  Peace  Treaty.  So 
long  as  the  German  people  is  labouring  under  the 
huge  liability  imposed  upon  it  by  the  Pensions  and 
Separation  Allowances  clause,  and  under  the  dis- 
abilities of  the  economic  clauses,  it  will  be  as  difficult 
for  Germans  to  feel,  as  for  their  late  enemies  to 
demand,  an  appropriate  attitude  of  regret.  The 
comparison  between  the  two  wrongs  may  indeed 
recall  the  mote  and  the  beam,  though  it  must  be 
confessed  that  a  sum  of  between  three  and  four 
thousand  million  pounds,  a  moderate  estimate  of  the 
liability  under  the  clause  in  question,  constitutes  a 
pretty  substantial  mote.  Nevertheless,  until  it  is 
removed,  Germans  will  continue  to  attribute  to  the 
Treaty,  and  to  the  Treaty  as  a  whole  rather  than  to  its 
more  indefensible  clauses,  evils  which,  probed  to  the 
bottom,  are  in  the  main  the  inevitable  legacy  of  the  war 
itself,  and  will  find  consolation  for  the  prickings  of 
conscience  in  an  unwholesome  attitude  of  martyrdom. 

Thus  far  our  argument  seems  to  have  brought  us 
1 80 


THE  OUTLOOK 

to  a  deadlock.  France  cannot  re-establish  true 
relations  with  Germans  while  her  wrongs  remain 
unredressed ;  but  Germany  is  estopped  from  redress- 
ing them,  in  the  only  spirit  in  which  redress  can 
bring  healing  and  appeasement,  because  she  too  is 
nursing  her  wrongs.  It  is  true  that,  as  between 
France  and  Germany,  as  between  Britain  and 
Germany,  there  have  of  late  been  symptoms  of 
rapprochement,  of  which  the  Rathenau-Loucheur 
agreement  for  reparation  in  kind  is  the  most  con- 
spicuous example.  But  here  again  the  agreement, 
however  desirable,  has  but  a  surface  value.  It 
springs  rather  from  a  common  interest  or  inclination 
to  leave  Britain  on  one  side  than  from  a  genuine 
desire  to  collaborate.  So  long  as  the  moral  atmos- 
phere remains  as  it  is,  co-operation  between  France 
and  Germany  must  remain  on  a  purely  material 
plane,  capable  indeed  of  involving  Britain  in  a 
damaging  isolation,  and  even  of  forming  the  nucleus 
of  an  anti-British,  or  anti-Anglo-Saxon  bloc  of  Con- 
tinental peoples,  but  not  of  reawakening  the  old  lost 
sense  of  moral  unity  of  Europe.  Europe,  in  fact, 
needs  Britain,  as  she  needed  her  in  1914,  and  again 
in  the  plastic  hours  of  1918.  Much  has  been  lost, 
but  much  can  still  be  retrieved,  if  Britain,  v.ho  is 
in  Europe  yet  not  of  Europe,  can  rise  to  the  height 
of  her  opportunity. 

It  is  the  fortune,  whether  for  good  or  ill,  of  the 
181 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

present  writer  to  be  able  to  see  his  country  through 
the  eyes  both  of  his  fellow-citizens  and  of  their 
foreign  critics.  To  have  this  double  vision  is  always 
a  stimulus,  but  there  are  moments  when  it  carries 
with  it  a  peculiar  degree  of  responsibility — when  to 
speak  is  perhaps  to  incur  odium,  but  to  keep  silent 
is  to  be  a  traitor.  Such  a  moment  is  the  present, 
when  our  policy  and  the  conjuncture  of  events  have 
brought  us  into  a  situation  which  contains  elements 
of  danger,  as  also  elements  of  hope,  of  which  few 
Englishmen  seem  to  be  aware. 

There  is  no  need  to  recall  Britain's  services  to 
Europe  during  the  war,  or  the  spirit  of  unselfish 
and  spontaneous  sacrifice  in  which  they  were 
rendered.  Our  five  million  volunteers — how  many 
of  them,  alas,  lost  to  the  further  service  of  their 
country — reveal  a  degree  of  individual  civic 
responsibility  which  no  other  belligerent  state  on 
either  side  can  approach.  Nor  need  it  be  stated, 
except  for  the  wilfully  blind  or  the  woefully  ignorant 
in  other  countries,  that  the  British  people,  irrespective 
of  class  or  party,  cherish  the  most  genuine  feelings 
of  goodwill  for  the  peoples  of  Europe  and  desire 
nothing  better  than  to  be  helpful  to  them.  If  they 
sinned,  as  they  did  sin  grievously,  in  the  election  of 
1 918,  it  was  through  ignorance  and  bad  leadership, 
not  out  of  evil  purpose ;  and  could  they  be  reawakened 
now  to  a  consciousness  of  their  awful  degree  of 

182 


THE  OUTLOOK 

responsibility  for  the  subsequent  miseries  of  Europe, 
they  would  do  all  they  could  to  make  amends.  But 
they  have  been  captained  by  opportunists  who  have 
followed,  not  guided,  their  inclinations;  and  their 
inclinations,  during  the  past  three  years,  have  been 
parochial  and  self-regarding.  "British  statesman- 
ship," said  the  influential  writer,  whose  book  has 
already  been  cited,  in  1919,  "has  often  been  right 
about  Europe ;  .  .  .  but  it  has  never  been  willing  to 
hold  in  its  hands  or  to  follow  for  more  than  a  brief 
moment  the  threads  of  policy  which  it  has  taken  up 
or  fingered.  In  the  European  family  of  nations  our 
character  and  our  history  have  made  us  amateurs 
and  preachers."  And  he  heads  the  chapter  which 
contains  this  characterization,  so  strangely  remi- 
niscent of  what  we  ourselves  are  fond  of  saying  of 
the  United  States,  with  these  warning  words  of  Maz- 
zini :  "If  England  persists  in  mmntaiiiing  this  neu- 
tral, passive,  selfish  part,  she  will  have  to  expiate  it."^ 
It  is  indeed  the  passivity  of  our  British  selfishness 
which  renders  us  so  exasperating  to  Continental 
observers.  If  we  were  actively  and  aggressively 
selfish  there  would  be  ground  for  active  complaint; 
it  is  our  cool  way  of  capitalizing  our  natural  ad- 
vantages of  history  and  situation  and  of  preaching 
a  similar  businesslike  reasonableness  to  others  less 
fortunately  circumstanced,  which  brings  the  word 
'  The  Responsibilities  of  the  League,  pp.  44  and  29. 
183 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

hypocrite  so  readily  to  Continental  lips.  What  other 
country  in  the  world  would  have  used  its  coal  export 
monopoly  to  the  full,  as  we  did  in  the  autumn  of 
1919,  at  a  time  when  the  price  of  fuel  was  a  matter 
of  life  and  death  to  Continental  manufacturers  and 
workmen,  whilst  at  the  same  time  promoting  elabo- 
rate arrangements  of  charity  for  the  victims  of  its 
own  policy?  What  other  country  could  wax  so 
eloquent  on  the  militarism  of  others  at  a  time  when 
the  offensive  power  of  its  own  navalism  has  become 
one  of  the  main  factors  in  European  politics;  or 
could  crown  a  war  waged  on  behalf  of  the  sanctity 
of  Treaties  with  a  Treaty  which  itself  embodied  a 
violation  of  international  right — a  Treaty,  more- 
over, which  was  taken  so  lightly  that  it  was  ratified 
by  Parliament  almost  without  discussion  and  is 
regarded  with  so  little  sanctity  that  two  out  of  the 
three  Parliamentary  parties  have  declared  for  its 
revision  regardless  of  the  wishes  of  their  co-signa- 
tories? Or  again,  who  else  but  the  British  would 
have  claimed  the  idea  of  mandates,  of  the  unselfish 
trusteeship  of  v»^eaker  peoples,  as  a  traditional 
national  principle,  at  the  very  moment  when  the 
strict  policy  of  three  generations,  under  which  we 
refused  to  secure  special  advantages  for  our  trade 
in  the  dependent  Empire,  has  been  definitely  broken 
down  ?  Or  who  would  have  granted  the  Dominions 
a  right  to  separate  representatives  as  independent 

184 


THE  OUTLOOK 

units  in  the  League  of  Nations  concurrently  with 
the  inauguration  of  a  system  of  mutual  preference, 
thereby,  at  least  in  foreign  eyes,  turning  a  unitary 
Commonwealth  into  the  model  of  a  "selfish  economic 
league?"  Similar  lapses  and  inconsistencies  could 
be  adduced  in  our  commercial  legislation,  which  has 
wounded  ex-ally  and  ex-enemy  alike.  Suffice  it  to 
say  that  never  has  our  incapacity  to  see  ourselves 
as  others  see  us  been  so  strikingly  demonstrated  as 
during  the  last  three  years. 

What  can  Britain  do  to  end  the  Continental 
deadlock?  She  can  realize  her  own  dishonour. 
Few  things  are  more  striking,  or  more  painful,  at 
the  present  time  for  an  Englishman  than  the  con- 
trast between  the  indignation  or  cynicism  with  which 
his  country's  policy  is  regarded  in  France,  in  Ger- 
many, and  in  the  new  and  enlarged  states  of  Central 
Europe  for  whose  problems  we  have  shown  so  little 
understanding,  and  the  matter  of  fact  way  in  which 
the  same  subjects,  the  same  agreed  and  accepted 
facts,  are  treated  in  his  own  country.  One  example 
must  suffice.  The  authoritative  history  of  the  Peace 
Conference  issued  by  the  Institute  of  International 
Affairs  deals  thus  with  a  question  which  is  vital  to 
the  welfare  of  some  seventy  million  men,  women, 
and  children.  The  Treaty  arrangements  "on  repara- 
tion and  indemnities"   it  declares  ^   "are  the  most 

*  Vol.  ii.,  p.  14. 

185 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

dubious,  but  it  is  of  interest  to  observe  that  the 
most  generally  assailed  provision  in  the  Treaty, 
that  of  making  Germany  responsible  for  pensions 
and  allowances,  was  proposed"  {supported  would 
be  more  accurate)  "by  General  Smuts,  whom  no 
one  can  accuse  of  vindictiveness  towards  Germany. 
While  there  were  many  who  condemned  the  policy 
of  including  pensions  in  reparation,  and  it  is  unques- 
tionably the  largest  financial  item  in  Germany's 
indebtedness,  it  is  also  well  not  to  forget  that  there 
were  some  high-minded  men  who  supported  it." 
The  sophistical  memorandum  by  means  of  which 
General  Smuts  finally  secured  President  Wilson's 
assent,  against  the  opinion  of  all  his  legal  advisers, 
to  this  clause  in  the  draft  Treaty  will  remain  a 
permanent  slur  on  his  record  i'^  it  is,  however,  worth 
citing  a  German  comment,  in  the  popular  Reclam 
edition  of  the  Treaty,  on  this  very  disingenuous  way 
of  exploiting  a  statesman's  lapse  from  rectitude. 
"The  injustice  of  this  demand  is  not  only  set  forth 
by  Keynes,  but  is  also  revealed  by  the  embarrass- 
ment of  other  weighty  English  Commentaries."  ^ 
It  is  exercises  in  self-deception  such  as  this  which 
illustrate  the  reverse  side  of  our  much-vaunted  love 
of  compromise  and  our  preference,  in  education,  on 
the  training  of  "character"  as  against  "intellect." 

*  See  Appendix  V. 

'  Reclam 's  Universal  Bibliothek,  No.  6206,  p.  76. 

186 


THE  OUTLOOK 

To  compromise  with  Truth  on  a  matter  where 
clear  thinking  is  a  debt  of  honour,  is  a  lapse  of  in- 
tellectual integrity  not  far  short  of  the  sin  against 
the  Holy  Ghost. 

Let  us  then  set  Germany  an  example  in  frankly 
facing  unpleasant  facts  and  recognize,  firstly  that  the 
Treaty  involves  a  violation  of  the  very  principle  on 
behalf  of  which  we  went  to  war,  and  secondly  that 
it  is  we,  that  is  Britain  and  the  Dominions,  who  are 
chiefly  responsible  for  these  violations,  which  were 
conceived  for  our  own  profit.  Once  this  is  realized, 
as  it  would  be  within  a  few  weeks  had  our  front 
bench  statesmen  on  either  side  the  moral  courage  to 
explain  it  to  the  electorate,  the  nation  itself  would 
be  quick  to  approve  the  further  step.  The  British 
Government,  acting  either  alone  or  together  with 
India  and  the  Dominions,  should  formally  state  that, 
whilst  bound  by  the  clause  in  so  far  as  its  co-signa- 
tories are  concerned,  it  has  altered  its  opinion  as  to 
its  moral  validity,  and  that  it  proposes,  in  con- 
sequence, to  accept  no  payments  due  to  it  on  that 
account.  The  practical  effect  of  such  a  declaration 
would  be,  firstly,  to  wipe  out  a  considerable  pro- 
portion of  the  German  liability;  secondly,  to  secure 
for  France  and  Belgium  and  possibly  also  for  Italy 
the  lion's  share  of  the  available  payments.  Instead 
of  receiving  only  52  per  cent.,  for  instance,  as 
against  our  22  per  cent,  of  the  payments  due,  France 

187 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

would  secure  advances  for  her  legitimate  needs  at  a 
considerably  higher  figure.  Thus  by  publicly  sur- 
rendering a  claim  to  which  we  have  no  moral 
justification,  and  which  has  done  infinite  harm  to 
our  good  name,  we  should  do  a  service  both  to 
France  and  to  Germany  and  re-equip  ourselves  with 
authority  for  our  task  of  mediation  and  appeasement. 

There  is  another  direction  which  must  be  briefly 
mentioned  here,  in  which  wq  can  make  amends  for 
our  misdeeds.  We  have  seen  that  anxiety  to  secure 
"equality  of  trade  conditions"  according  to  Point  3 
of  the  Fourteen  Points  was  a  leading  consideration 
in  the  mind  of  German  statesmen  in  demanding 
the  armistice.  It  is  no  over-statement  to  say  that 
Point  3  has  found  no  practical  embodiment  in  the 
Treaty  at  all.  "No  general  conventions  were  con- 
cluded on  this  subject,"  says  the  authoritative 
English  wTiter  already  cited,  "because  .  .  .  there 
had  been  no  sufficient  prior  consultation  between 
the  experts  and  no  mature  study  of  facts  and 
projects" — another  testimony  to  the  results  of  the 
vicious  procedure  of  the  Conference.^  An  American 
authority  is  even  more  explicit.  After  explaining 
in  some  detail  what  "equality  of  trade  conditions" 
may  be  held  to  mean,  that  it  is  a  declaration  against 
discrimination,  not  against  tariffs  in  general,  he 
remarks,    "The   matter   was   not   thrashed   out   at 

*  The  Responsibilities  of  the  League,  p.  212. 
188 


THE  OUTLOOK 

Paris."  ^  In  point  of  fact  the  commercial  section 
of  the  Treaty  is  full  of  one-sided  obligations  under- 
taken by  Germany  to  which  there  correspond  no 
guarantees  of  reciprocal  treatment  on  the  Allied  side. 
But  these  obligations  are  limited  in  duration  and 
come  to  an  end,  for  the  most  part,  in  January,  1925, 
when,  to  quote  from  the  Allies'  covering  letter  of 
June,  19 1 9,  "the  Allied  and  Associated  Powers  will 
be  able"  (though,  be  it  observed,  they  do  not  bind 
themselves)  "to  co-operate  with  her  (Germany) 
in  arriving  at  a  more  permanent  arrangement  for 
the  establishment  of  an  equitable  treatment  for  the 
commerce  of  all  nations." 

There  has  as  yet  been  no  sign  that  such  an 
arrangement  is  in  sight,  or  even  contemplated. 
Recent  British  practice,  in  fact,  has  been  all  in  the 
other  direction.  It  is  not  generally  known  in  Eng- 
land, though  it  is  more  fully  realized  abroad,  to 
what  an  extent  we  have  departed  since  the  war  from 
the  longstanding  and  pacific  tradition  of  British 
commercial  policy.  "Between  i860  and  1919,"  says 
a  recent  American  official  report,^  "Great  Britain 
maintained  the  open  door  in  India  and  in  the  Crown 
Colonies  generally,  with  either   free  trade  or  low 

*  What  Really  Happened  at  Paris,  edited  by  Colonel  House, 

p.  314- 

'Introductory  Survey  of  Colonial  Tariff  Policies,  U.  S. 
Tariff  Commissions,  Washington,  1921. 

189 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

tariff,  for  revenue  only,"  the  previous  system  of 
preference  having  been  swept  away,  after  its  abuses 
had  become  manifest,  by  Gladstone  in  i860.  A 
timid  effort  to  reintroduce  it  had  already  been  made 
before  the  war,  first  in  a  preferential  export  duty 
upon  tin  ore  exported  from  the  four  Malay  States, 
which  passed  unnoticed  by  the  British  public  till 
it  was  cited  ^s  a  precedent  for  further  action,  and 
then  in  preferential  arrangements  between  several 
of  the  West  Indian  Colonies  and  Canada.  During 
the  war  the  breach  was  widened  by  the  establish- 
ment of  a  preferential  export  duty  upon  palm  kernels 
from  the  West  African  Colonies,  and  in  1919  the 
system  was  formally  extended  to  the  whole  non-self 
governing  Empire  by  the  granting  of  preferences  to 
all  imperial  products  dutiable  under  the  United 
Kingdom  tariff,  including  of  course,  sugar,  cocoa, 
tea,  tobacco,  wine  and  dried  fruit.  At  the  same 
time  there  has  been  a  considerable  expansion  of 
preferential  arrangements  in  the  Colonies  them- 
selves, initiated,  or  in  the  case  of  India,  favoured 
from  London.  "Complete  preferential  import 
schedules  have  been  adopted  or  extended,"  says  the 
report  already  cited,  "by  all  the  tariff  divisions  of 
the  West  Indies  except  Bermuda,  and  the  amount 
of  the  preferential  has  been  increased;  a  complete 
system  of  preferences  has  been  introduced  into 
Cyprus;  and  differential  export  duties  have  been 

190 


THE  OUTLOOK 

imposed  upon  raw  hides  and  skins  exported  from 
Nigeria,  the  Gold  Coast,  Sierra  Leone,  and  Gambia," 
thereby  continuing  the  war-time  arrangement,  "and 
upon  tin  ore  exported  from  Nigeria.  .  .  .  There 
are  thus"  (the  report  continues)  "in  addition  to  the 
self-governing  Dominions  and  the  possessions  de- 
pendent upon  or  intimately  associated  with  them" 
(the  reference  is  to  the  mandated  territories  of  the 
Dominions  and  to  areas  like  Basutoland  and 
Bechuanaland)  "twenty-five  tariff  jurisdictions 
among  the  British  Crown  Colonies,  including  India, 
which  now  have  more  or  less  extensive  differential 
duties."  In  addition  to  this  we  have  passed  domestic 
legislation,  in  particular,  the  Aliens  Restriction  Act, 
which  discriminates  against  commercial  travellers 
from  ex-enemy  countries,  and  we  have  also  permitted 
the  Government  to  become  associated  with  certain 
private  enterprises  in  mandated  areas,  notably  in  the 
case  of  the  pre-war  private  oil  concessions  in 
Mesopotamia,  in  a  manner  which,  to  say  the  least, 
gravely  strains  the  meaning  of  the  Open  Door. 

These  are  not  matters  of  detail ;  they  are  matters 
of  principle,  and  of  vital  importance,  not  only  to 
our  g;ood  name  but  to  our  security.  The  greatest 
external  danger  which  threatens  the  British  Com- 
monwealth, the  greatest  external  danger  which  has 
always  threatened  it,  is  a  coalition  of  hostile  powers. 
It  is  due  to  our  fair  and  generous  commercial  policy, 

191 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

more  than  to  any  other  single  cause,  that  we  were 
able  to  maintain  our  naval  supremacy,  and  to  ex- 
tend and  develop  our  empire,  without  exciting  undue 
jealously  and  active  opposition,  during  the  century 
preceding  1914.  But  the  world  is  more  crowded 
and  more  competitive  to-day,  and  we  cannot  count 
upon  the  same  immunity.  It  is  courting  disaster  to 
recur  to  eighteenth  century  ideas,  to  hark  back  to 
the  old  plantation  theory  of  empire,  at  a  time  when, 
not  Germany  only,  but  a  whole  array  of  other  states 
have  developed  their  industrial  life  to  a  point  where 
it  is  vitally  dependent  upon  raw  materials  produced 
under  the  British  flag.  That  flag  had  long  ceased 
to  stand  for  monopoly  and  has  not  in  the  past  stood 
for  dishonour.  It  must  cease  once  more  to  stand 
for  either.  Once  the  British  public  realizes  the 
incontestable  fact  that  we  pledged  ourselves  in 
November,  1918,  against  discriminatory  commercial 
policies,  and  that  the  policy  of  preference  in  the 
not  self-governing  territories  of  the  Commonwealth 
is  a  grave  departure  from  the  liberal  policy  which 
is  at  once  the  justification  and  the  glory  of  our 
world-status,  it  will  be  ready  enough  to  take  the 
practical  measures  for  making  the  pledges  of  Novem- 
ber, 1918,  and  June,  191 9,  a  reality.  This  can  best 
be  done  in  an  international  conference  specifically 
summoned  to  deal  with  the  whole  problem  of 
commercial  policy,  a  problem  which,  it  cannot  be 

192 


THE  OUTLOOK 

emphasized  too  strongly,  contains,  more  than  any 
other,  the  potentiaHties  of  a  new  war.  Let  Britain 
prepare  for  such  a  conference  by  a  frank  public 
statement  of  our  desire  to  enter  into  fair  and  equit- 
able arrangements,  satisfactory  to  the  other 
industrial  states,  and  in  harmony  with  our 
traditional  policy,  in  regard  to  this  whole  group 
of  questions,  and  by  working  out  in  detail  the  im- 
plications of  the  "equality  of  trade  conditions" 
accepted  by  us  on  November  4,  191 8.  If  her  states- 
men do  so,  and  can  make  the  country  follow  them, 
as  they  can  if  they  have  sufficient  faith  in  their 
cause,  they  may  steer  the  world  back  into  the  calm 
fiscal  waters  of  the  eighteen-sixties,  when  a  general 
"most  favoured  nation  treatment"  was  the  order 
of  the  day,  and  avert  the  greatest  menace  which  at 
present  threatens  our  Commonwealth,  the  danger  of 
a  coalition  of  jealous  or  impoverished  trade  rivals. 
Moreover,  most  immediately  important  of  all,  by 
paying  a  debt  of  honour  due  both  to  France  and  to 
Germany,  they  will  have  created  the  soil  and  atmos- 
phere in  which  the  tender  plant  of  Anglo-Franco- 
German  understanding  can  at  length  take  root  and 
live.  And  this,  as  we  have  already  said,  is  the  best 
hope  both  for  the  peace  of  Europe  and  for  the 
League  of  Nations. 

For  with  France  once  more  herself  and  with  a 
Germany  conscious  of  her  new  direction  and  bring- 
13  193 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

ing  her  wealth  of  ancestral  endowment  into  harmony 
with  the  deeper  needs  of  the  modern  age,  the  equi- 
poise of  Europe,  disturbed  for  over  half  a  century, 
can  once  more  be  restored.  Let  us  not  set  our 
expectations  on  the  pedestrian  level  to  which  men's 
minds  have  become  accustomed  since  the  great  dis- 
illusionment of  19 1 9.  If  the  necessary  healing  can 
be  accomplished,  a  better  era  may  dawn  for  Europe 
than  she  has  known  for  seventy  years.  Restored 
to  health  and  self-confidence,  with  her  long  humane 
and  heroic  tradition  enriched  and  intensified  by  a 
great  experience,  with  her  rural  life  eased  and 
invigorated  by  the  renewed  prosperity  of  agriculture, 
France  will  once  more  be  free  to  radiate  the  stimulus 
of  her  ideas  and  to  exercise  the  harmonizing  and 
regulating  function  which  is  properly  hers  in  Europe. 
Germany,  if  like  the  France  of  1871,  she  can  win 
her  way  through  to  serenity  and  self-knowledge, 
will  yet  bless  the  fate  which  freed  her  rich  and 
powerful  spirit  from  the  compulsion  of  a  mechanical 
tutelage  and  will  feel  herself  opening  out  to  a  new 
enterprise  of  exploration  in  the  inner  as  in  the  outer 
world,  which  will  at  length  reveal  her  true 
spiritual  quality  to  mankind.  If  for  France 
the  watchword  of  the  moment  is  simply  "Be 
yourself  again,"  the  duty  laid  upon  Germany,  upon 
individual  German  men  and  women,  is  to  look  in- 
wards and  find  themselves. 

194 


THE  OUTLOOK 

The  main  problem  of  the  new  European  order 
lies,  as  we  have  seen,  with  the  three  Western  powers; 
but  a  few  words  must  be  said  of  the  other  chief 
partners  in  the  Continental  scheme. 

The  political  map  of  Europe  divides  itself  to-day 
into  three  sections — the  Western,  including 
Germany;  the  East-Central,  including  the  Suc- 
cession States;  and  Russia.  The  last  we  may  leave 
aside,  for  it  is,  for  the  moment,  no  longer  an  integral 
part  of  Europe.  Let  us  glance  for  a  moment  at  the 
intermediate  region  which  stretches  from  Fiume  to 
Vilna  and  from  Passau  to  Athens  and  Buda-Pesth. 

The  chief  political  power  in  this  area,  subject 
to  the  overriding  authority  of  the  Supreme  Council, 
is  exercised  by  the  Little  Entente  of  Czecho- 
slovakia, Jugo-Slavia,  and  Roumania,  and  the 
chief  pivot  of  its  politics  is  Prague.  The  insight 
and  initiative  of  two  great  statesmen,  of  different 
gifts  and  generations  but  with  the  same  broad, 
liberal  outlook,  Masaryk  and  Benes,  have  raised 
their  young  state,  at  one  bound,  into  a  position  of 
unusual  weight  and  authority  among  its  compeers. 
The  Little  Entente  constitutes  at  once  an  effective 
sanction  of  the  Treaties  and  a  nucleus  of  crystalliza- 
tion for  the  activities  and  the  organization  dispersed 
or  shattered  by  the  break-up  of  the  Habsburg 
monarchy.  Those  who  point  the  finger  of  scorn  at 
the    Danube    area    as    having    been    "Balkanized" 

195 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

can  have  no  first-hand  experience  of  the  strength 
of  the  passions  and  enthusiasms  which  swept  the 
old  order  away  and  set  to  work  to  build  on  its  site. 
To  reconstitute  a  Danubian  unit  because  it  would 
facilitate  trade,  or  look  more  tidy  on  the  map,  is 
a  fantastic  policy,  though  it  is  often  recommended 
by  British  liberals  who  would  be  the  first  to  condemn 
plans  of  political  unification  for  the  congeries  of 
nationalities  within  their  own  Commonwealth,  It 
is  through  the  steady  growth  of  habit,  through  the 
authority  of  Time  in  investing  the  new  frontier  with 
a  sense  of  permanence,  through  peaceful  co-opera- 
tion on  the  firm  basis  of  the  accomplished  fact,  that 
a  sense  of  unity  will  grow  up.  Cobdenites  would  do 
well  to  remember,  what  their  master,  when  put 
to  the  test,  himself  did  not  overlook,  that  Free 
Trade  was  devised  for  men  and  nations,  not  men 
and  nations  for  Free  Trade.  When  deep  seated 
sentiment  clashes  wnth  commercial  convenience, 
sentiment  must  first  be  satisfied,  but  convenience, 
in  the  long  run,  finds  a  way  into  its  own.  But  such 
adjustments  can  be  hastened  rather  by  sympathetic 
understanding  than  by  ignorant  and  irritating 
criticism. 

One  great  Power  has  been  deliberately  omitted 
from  our  survey.  Italy  belongs  half  to  Western 
and  half  to  East-Central  Europe,  and  has  her  special 
place,  as  of  right,  in  both  constellations.    As  Britain 

196 


THE  OUTLOOK 

participates  both  in  the  hfe  of  Europe  and  of  the 
overseas  world,  with  the  detachment,  and  the  duty, 
to  act  as  mediator  and  interpreter  between  the  two, 
so  Italy,  perhaps  more  happily  endowed  with  insight 
and  imagination,  can  do  much,  as  Rome  did  of  old, 
to  soften  racial  asperities  and  to  bring  unity  and 
order  into  the  life  of  the  many  peoples  whom  her 
influence  touches.  This  was  the  mission  foretold  for 
her  by  Mazzini  and.  though  her  statesmen  of  recent 
years  have  been  slow  to  fulfil  it,  no  one  who  knows 
her  people  and  their  great  gifts  can  doubt  her  capa- 
city to  do  so.  The  war  has  left  Italy  with  many 
problems,  but  these  are  mainly  of  the  material  order. 
Despite  superficial  disturbances  and  embarrassments, 
she  has  emerged  from  her  first  great  united  effort  as 
a  kingdom  with  abounding  health  and  vitality.  All 
that  she  needs  in  order  to  fill  the  position  that  is 
rightly  hers  is  to  realize  that  she  has  grown  into  it. 
When  once  she  is  conscious  of  her  strength,  she  will 
look  across  the  Adriatic  with  different  eyes  and 
make  harmony  and  stability,  rather  than  ingenious 
diplomatic  combinations,  the  goal  of  her  policy. 
The  Third  Rome  may  yet  be  the  greatest  and  most 
enduring  of  the  three  in  binding  Slav  and  Latin 
and  Teuton,  and  even  Anglo-Saxon,  together  in  a 
common  civilization.  If  Italy,  with  her  great  tradi- 
tion, does  not  breed  good  Europeans,  where  else  are 
we  to  seek  them  ? 

197 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   ECONOMIC   OUTLOOK 

'T'HE  first  pre-requisite  for  an  understanding  of 
•■'  the  economic  situation  in  Europe,  is  to  have  a 
clear  view  of  its  causes.  Europe's  present  diffi- 
culties, v^hich  have  become  familiar  to  public 
opinion  both  in  Britain  and  America  owing  to  the 
unemployment  they  have  caused  there,  are  not  due 
primarily  to  the  Treaty  of  Versailles  or  to  the 
"Balkanization"  of  East-Central  Europe.  They 
are  due  first  and  chiefly  to  the  character  and  duration 
of  the  war.  They  are  the  inevitable  result  of  the 
Siege  of  Europe.  They  are  due,  secondly,  to  the 
failure  of  the  besiegers  to  take  prompt  and  adequate 
measures  after  the  Armistice  to  provide  the  besieged 
area  with  the  means  for  recuperating  its  industrial 
life.  And  only  in  the  third  plan  and  in  a  minor 
degree,  are  they  due  to  the  Treaties.  As  regards 
the  Austrian  and  Hungarian  Treaties  the  Habsburg 
Monarchy  had  fallen  to  pieces  long  before  they 
were  drafted;  they  cannot  be  held  responsible  for 

198 


THE  OUTLOOK 

the  new  frontiers,  and  consequent  obstructions  to 
trade,  involved  in  its  break-up.  As  regards  the 
Versailles  Treaty,  perhaps  the  point  to  which  the 
greatest  criticism  attaches,  apart  from  the  inclusion 
of  unwarranted  items  in  the  German  liability,  is  the 
delay  and  the  consequent  unsettlement  caused  by 
leaving  open  two  vital  questions — the  fate  of  Upper 
Silesia,  and  the  amount  of  the  German  indemnity. 
Of  these  the  former  has  now  been  permanently 
settled,  while  the  latter,  fixed  conformably  with  the 
Treaty  in  May,  1921,  only  remains  unsettled  because 
it  is  inseparably  bound  up  with  the  question  of  the 
items  of  the  liability.  The  economic  outlook  in 
Europe,  therefore,  involves  far  wider  issues  than 
the  "revision  of  the  Treaties"  with  which  it  is  often 
associated.  No  detailed  treatment  of  those  issues 
can  be  attempted  here;  all  that  will  be  attempted  is 
to  draw  attention  to  some  of  the  broader  facts  in 
the  situation  which  the  bankers  and  business  men 
and  financial  and  currency  experts  who  have 
hurried  to  the  old  Continent's  bedside  are  perhaps 
in  danger  of  overlooking. 

The  first  point  to  be  noted  is  that  public  finance 
is  not  an  infallible  index  of  national  prosperity. 
The  public  finance  of  the  European  belligerents  in 
the  late  war,  with  the  exception  of  Great  Britain, 
is  in  deplorable  confusion;  budgets  are  not 
being   balanced   and   the    outlook    is    obscure    and 

199 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

dependent  on  hypothetical  hopes  and  contingencies. 
The  victors  are  looking  for  reparation  and  release 
from  extra-European  debts,  the  vanquished  for 
reduction  in  their  liability.  Meanwhile  Govern- 
ments are  meeting  their  obligations,  not  by  the 
normal  method  of  taxation,  or  even  by  borrowing, 
but  by  debasing  the  currency,  an  expedient  rendered 
easier  for  the  modern  world  than  for  its  ancient  and 
mediaeval  predecessors  along  this  primrose  path  by 
the  discovery  of  the  printing  press  as  a  device  of 
Governmental  alchemy.  The  result  is  reflected  in  the 
table  of  foreign  exchanges,  the  self-registering 
barometer  of  the  public  finances  of  the  States  of 
the  world. 

But  public  finance  and  private  prosperity  are 
two  different  things,  in  spite  of  the  close  and  delicate 
connections  between  them.  The  fact  that  the 
exchanges  with  the  dollar  have  fallen  in  most 
European  countries  during  the  last  year  does  not 
necessarily  mean  that  Europe  is  not  recuperating 
in  other  directions.  Public  finance  is  the  finance 
of  the  organization  which  holds  the  community 
together,  not  of  the  producers  of  wealth  who  form 
the  active  part  of  the  community  itself.  A  state 
cannot  collect  more  in  taxes  than  there  is  in  the 
community  to  collect;  more  indeed  than  a  propor- 
tion of  what  there  is  to  collect.  But  it  can  collect 
a  great  deal  less;  and  if,  as  in  many  of  the  states 

200 


THE  OUTLOOK 

of  post-war  Europe,  the  tax-collecting  equipment 
is  weak  and  ill-organized  and  state  authority  itself 
not  fully  established  in  the  minds  of  important 
sections  of  taxpayers,  there  is  a  natural  temptation 
to  refrain  from  trying  to  exert  it.  Or  to  put  it  more 
precisely,  there  is  a  temptation  to  exert  power 
indirectly,  by  making  the  whole  community  and  in 
particular  the  possessors  of  fixed  money  incomes, 
suffer  from  the  results  of  a  debased  and  fluctuating 
medium  of  exchange  rather  than  directly,  by  openly 
laying  the  tax  burden  on  the  shoulders  chosen  to 
bear  it.  But  it  can  easily  be  seen  that  public 
finance,  so  conducted,  is  perfectly  compatible  with 
a  substantial  measure  of  trade  and  prosperity,  and 
this  has  often  been  exemplified  in  the  past  in  South 
America  and  elsewhere. 

"It  is  within  the  experience  of  the  present-day 
banker  and  exporter,"'  remarks  a  leading  American 
financial  authority,'  "that  business  was  safely  and 
constantly  conducted  between  Colombia  and 
Mexico,  for  instance,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
United  States  on  the  other,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
in  the  case  of  Colombia  the  value  of  its  paper 
currency  had  fallen  progressively  to  the  extent  of 
99  per  cent,  of  its  gold  standard,  and  in  the  case  of 

'  Mr.  Alvin  W.  Krech,  President  of  the  Equitable  Trust 
Company  of  New  York,  in  a  foreword  to  a  pamphlet  by 
Professor  Seligman  on  Currency,  Inflation  and  Public  Debts. 

201 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

Mexico  the  paper  currency  had  been  entirely  ex- 
tinguished. The  fact  is  that  a  country  which  has 
no  currency  whatever,  or  the  currency  of  which 
is  totally  valueless,  can  nevertheless  conduct  and 
engage  in  foreign  trade  just  so  long  as  it  has  some- 
thing to  export.  Under  such  circumstances  the 
currency  used  must  of  necessity  be  foreign  currency. 
.  .  .  This  is  precisely  the  method  now  pursued  by 
the  Austrian,  German,  or  Polish  manufacturer  who 
is  dependent  upon  the  importation  of  foreign  raw 
materials  for  the  conduct  of  his  business." 

In  spite  of  the  hindrances  thus  involved  by 
Governmental  action,  there  has  been,  in  fact,  during 
the  last  year,  a  perceptible  improvement  in  the 
economic  situation  throughout  the  continent.  It 
is  due  to  numerous  causes  both  psychological  and 
material.  The  war  is  receding  daily  further  into 
the  past.  Men  are  recovering  from  the  physical 
and  nervous  exhaustion  of  the  struggle.  Boys 
who  were  too  young  to  fight  are  stepping  into  the 
ranks  of  the  producers.  Life  is  resuming  its  routine, 
the  new  governments  and  frontiers,  the  new  laws 
and  trade  routes,  are  becoming  firmly  established. 
The  machinery  of  production  is  being  steadily 
repaired;  roads  and  railroads  are  being  made  more 
available  for  traffic;  services  are  being  resumed 
and  factories  restored  to  pre-war  uses.  Arrange- 
ments  are   being    increasingly   made   to   overcome 

202 


THE  OUTLOOK 

the  difficulty  of  securing  oversea  raw  material 
through  this  or  that  agency  of  financing.  While 
the  "tired  waves"  of  international  and  govern- 
mental action  have  seemed  "no  painful  inch  to 
gain,"  private  enterprise,  working  imperceptibly 
through  a  thousand  creeks  and  inlets  has  come 
flooding  in.  The  work  of  the  Genoa  Conference 
will  be  to  promote  the  governmental  policies  and 
to  strengthen  the  necessary  basis  of  public  confidence 
which  will  facilitate  these  private  agencies. 

Recuperation  through  private  enterprise  is  a 
strange  and  unexpected  result  after  the  hopes  of 
co-operative  governmental  action  held  out  by  the 
prospect  of  a  League  of  Nations,  and  after  three 
generations  of  propaganda  for  reform  through 
socialism  or  state  action.  But  the  fact  must  be 
faced  that,  as  the  European  situation  has  been 
allowed  to  develop  since  the  armistice,  the  capitalist 
entrepreneur  is  more  needed,  is  worth  more  to 
European  society,  than  at  any  time  since  Europe 
was  first  opened  up  to  modern  industrialism  in  the 
first  half  of  the  last  century.  Men  like  Stinnes  and 
Loucheur,  Rathenau  and  Krassin,  Inverforth  and 
Leverhulme,  little  as  we  may  sometimes  like  them, 
much  as  some  of  us  might  prefer  the  rule  of  a 
Robert  Cecil  or  a  Lansbury,  do  in  fact,  in  virtue  of 
certain  gifts  of  mind  and  character,  gifts  that  have 
in  pre-war  Europe  as  in  present-day  America  been 

203 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

greatly  overvalued  and  overpaid,  hold  the  master- 
key  to  the  revival  of  prosperity  for  the  populations 
whom  the  war  has  plunged  into  destitution.  It 
does  not  need  a  prophet's  vision  to  descry  that  we 
are  entering  upon  a  period  of  capitalist  revival  when 
the  big  strategic  outlook  which  distinguishes  the 
"captain  of  industry"  in  Europe  and  America  will 
be  more  than  ever  in  evidence.  Our  difficulty  in 
the  coming  years  will  not  be  to  save  Europe  from 
bankruptcy  but  to  save  her  soul  from  her  saviours. 
Meanwhile  there  is  a  parallel  process  of  develop- 
ment going  on  in  another  region  of  production.  The 
peasant  has  come  into  his  own.  We  have  seen  that 
the  war  involved  the  temporary  de-industrialization 
of  the  blockaded  area.  A  corollary  to  this  was  the 
alteration  of  the  balance  of  economic  power  between 
town  and  country.  If  there  were,  to  quote  Mr. 
Hoover's  figure,  a  hundred  million  more  people  in 
Europe  than  could  be  fed  from  the  continent's  own 
supplies,  how  fortunate  was  the  position  of  their 
producers  during  the  period  when  oversea  supplies 
were  cut  off,  first  by  allied  sea-power  and  then  by 
the  fall  of  the  exchanges!  Farmers  have  in  fact 
everywhere  in  Europe,  both  in  the  blockaded  area 
and  in  the  allied  and  neutral  countries  affected  by 
the  submarine  campaign,  in  spite  of  the  shortage 
of  fertilizers  and  other  inconveniences,  greatly 
improved    their    economic    position.      The    writer 

204 


THE  OUTLOOK 

was  present  not  long  ago  at  a  political  meeting  in 
a  rural  district  in  Great  Britain,  when  a  front  bench 
politician  advocated  a  capital  levy  on  "war-made 
wealth" ;  the  silence  in  which  the  suggestion  was 
received  was  eloquent  of  the  feelings  and  the  bank 
balances  of  an  audience  consisting  predominantly 
of  farmers.  An  intersting  study  could  be  made  of 
the  growth  of  investment  among  the  farming  class 
in  Britain  and  other  countries.  Everywhere  in 
Europe,  from  Ireland  and  Wales  to  France  and 
Bavaria  and  Austria  and  Italy  and  Bulgaria,  even 
to  war-scarred  Poland  and  Serbia  and  the  Baltic 
Republics,  the  peasants  have  improved  their  posi- 
tion, both  against  the  town  banker,  to  whom  they 
were  often  in  bondage,  and  against  the  landlord. 
In  Great  Britain  the  result  has  been  manifested  in 
the  widespread  break-up  by  sale  of  large  landed 
estates  and  their  acquirement  by  working  farmers; 
the  saine  process  has  been  in  operation  in  France, 
already  predominantly  a  land  of  small  working 
landed  proprietors;  a  recent  authority  states  that 
a  million  new  proprietors  have  come  into  existence 
since  the  war.  In  Italy  and  in  Eastern  Europe 
the  process  has  been  more  summary.  Many  of 
the  owners  of  the  Latifundia,  the  large  landed 
properties  in  South  Italy  and  Sicily,  often  in  the 
hands  of  absentee  proprietors  acting  through  local 
bailiffs,    have    simply    been    annexed    by    working 

205 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

peasants,  and  the  Government,  which  can  reckon 
on  bringing  the  town  workman  to  heel  through  the 
law  of  supply  and  demand,  has  been  unable  to 
interfere.  In  Czecho-Slovakia  there  has  been  drastic 
legislation  against  large  estates;  in  Roumania 
similar  action  has  been  foreshadowed;  in  Croatia 
the  change  of  government  has  in  many  cases  led 
automatically  to  the  same  result;  whilst  in  Poland 
a  like  process  cannot  long  be  delayed.  The  imme- 
diate result  of  this  may  in  some  cases  be  to  diminish 
production  by  removing  the  skilled  supervision 
which  the  existence  of  large  landed  units  sometimes 
though  not  always  implied,  but  its  permanent  result 
throughout  Europe,  as  in  Ireland,  cannot  be  other- 
wise than  healthy  and  stabilizing,  and  new  and 
more  democratic  methods  of  efficiency  will  emerge 
in  due  course. 

There  has  also  been  a  steady  movement  of 
convalescence  in  the  commercial  policy  of  the 
European  states,  particularly  of  the  new  states. 
In  1918,  as  we  have  seen,  new  administrations  were 
formed  all  over  Central  and  Eastern  Europe  to  deal 
with  a  disintegrating  continent,  and  their  first  effort 
everywhere,  as  was  inevitable,  was  to  affirm  their 
own  existence.  New  frontiers  had  first  to  be 
physically  created,  and  next  to  be  emphasized  by 
government  action.  New  channels  had  to  be  dug 
for  commerce  and  intercourse,  and  travellers  and 

206 


THE  OUTLOOK 

traders  and  bankers  had  to  be  persuaded  to  use 
them.  Nations  like  Poland  and  Czecho-SIovakia, 
which  had  previously  only  had  a  commercial  policy 
in  imagination,  or  in  the  voluntary  action,  by  boy- 
cott or  preferential  treatment  of  their  devoted 
partisans,  were  now  able  to  make  their  will  effective 
and  to  translate  nationalist  theory  into  fact. 
Economic  nationalism,  whether  right  or  wrong, 
wise  or  unwise,  is  almost  invariably  associated  in 
the  modern  world  with  the  movement  for  political 
independence;  and  no  one  acquainted  with  the  in- 
credible lengths  to  which  nationalist  feeling  had 
been  carried,  on  the  economic  field,  in  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  Monarchy  and  in  Prussian  Poland, 
could  doubt  that  the  immediate  effect  of  political 
freedom  would  be  the  inauguration  of  strongly  self- 
regarding  and  nationalist  policies  in  the  sphere  of 
trade  and  industry. 

It  is  the  ignoring  of  this  vital  factor  of  sentiment 
and  tradition  which  initiates  much  of  the  recent 
writing  of  Britain  and  America  about  the  East 
European  situation.  Mr.  Keynes,  for  instance, 
included  in  his  list  of  proposed  remedies  for  "the 
economic  consequences  of  the  peace"  a  Free  Trade 
Union,  composed  of  "Germany,  Poland,  and  the 
new  states  which  formerly  composed  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  and  Turkish  Empires,"  with  the  pre- 
sumable   addition   of    intermediate    states    such   as 

207 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

Bulgaria  or  Greece.  What  is  this  but  a  revival,  in 
an  extended  and  more  difficult  form,  and  under 
infinitely  more  difficult  circumstances,  of  the  Mittel- 
eiiropa  project  which  Friedrlch  Naumann  launched 
in  1915,  when  the  German  military  machine  was 
more  and  more  assuming  the  role  of  an  economic 
administration  for  the  whole  blockaded  area? 
Naumann  indeed  went  further  than  Keynes  in 
definite  schemes  of  centralized  economic  control; 
he  proposed  the  setting  up  of  a  number  of  com- 
missions at  Prague,  acting  in  indefinite  collaboration 
with  the  so-called  surviving  sovereign  governments. 
But  both  his  scheme  and  Keynes'  foundered  on  the 
same  rock.  They  ignored  the  fact  that  political 
independence  carries  with  it,  inevitably  and  neces- 
sarily, control  of  commercial  policy;  for  a  state 
which  cannot  tax  itself  as  it  desires  has  been  de- 
prived of  the  most  indispensable  instrument  of 
social,  that  is  of  indisputably  domestic  policy. 

Perhaps  British  readers  will  best  appreciate  this 
point  when  it  is  illustrated  for  them  in  their  own 
history.  In  1859,  when  Free  Trade  was  at  the 
zenith  of  its  popularity,  when  the  idea,  not  of  a 
Free  Trade  Union  for  Europe  or  for  the  British 
Europe  but  for  the  world,  was  seriously  entertained 
by  large  sections  of  opinion,  the  Government  of 
Canada  for  the  first  time  levied  a  duty  on  British 
imports.    The  Colonial  Office  protested  in  the  name 

208 


THE  OUTLOOK 

of  Free  Trade  and  imperial  unity.  The  Canadian 
reply  is  worth  placing  on  record,  for  it  expresses 
what  is  being  thought  in  Prague  and  Warsaw,  in 
Belgrade  and  in  Bucharest,  and  in  Dublin  also, 
to-day : 

"The  Government  of  Canada,  acting  for  its 
legislature  and  people,  cannot,  through  those  feelings 
of  deference  which  they  owe  to  the  Imperial 
authorities,  in  any  way  waive  or  diminish  the  right 
of  the  people  of  Canada  to  decide  for  themselves 
both  as  to  the  mode  and  extent  to  which  taxation 
shall  be  imposed.  .  .  .  Self -Government  would  be 
utterly  annihilated  if  the  views  of  the  Imperial  Gov- 
ernment were  to  be  preferred  to  those  of  the  people 
of  Canada,  It  is  therefore  the  duty  of  the  Canadian 
legislature  to  adjust  the  taxation  of  the  people 
in  the  way  they  deem  best,  even  if  it  should 
unfortunately  happen  to  meet  the  disapproval  of 
the  Imperial  Ministry.  Her  Majesty  cannot  be 
advised  to  disallow  such  Acts  unless  her  advisers 
are  prepared  to  assume  the  administration  of  the 
affairs  of  the  Colony  irrespective  of  the  views  of 
its  inhabitants." 

Here  is  the  issue  of  economic  independence  put 
in  its  plainest  form.  It  is  the  creed  which  has  rent 
the  Austro-Hungarian  Monarchy,  as  it  has  still 
more  recently  rent  the  United  Kingdom  of  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland.  It  has  raised  a  wall  between 
14  209 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

Vienna  and  Prague,  as  between  Belfast  and  Dublin, 
and  it  will  subsist  as  long  as  the  sentiments  of 
political  attachment  by  which  it  is  nourished 
maintain  their  hold  on  men's  minds.  You  cannot, 
as  English  liberals  often  fondly  imagine,  have 
political  nationalism  without  custom-houses.  The 
one  may  be  admirable  and  the  other  odious,  but 
they  are  part  of  the  same  scheme.  If  Switzerland, 
in  spite  of  her  weakness,  and  her  distance  from  the 
sea,  has  succeeded  in  preserving  her  economic 
independence  and  even  in  fighting  tariff  wars  with 
her  neighbours,  right  through  the  period  of  Free 
Trade  predominance,  resisting  every  temptation 
held  out  to  her  to  enter  into  larger  combinations, 
what  likelihood  is  there  that  the  younger  republics, 
formed  in  the  heyday  of  nationalist  feeling,  will 
consent  to  abrogate  their  sovereign  rights  ?  ^ 

What  then  is  the  line  of  advance?  It  is  that 
which  British  liberals  are  so  fond  of  advocating  for 
the  British  Commonwealth  itself — co-operation 
between  independent  governments.  Nationalist 
sentiment  demands  in  Canada  and  Ireland,  as  in 
Poland  and  Czecho-Slovakia,  that  independence, 
fully  secured  and  guaranteed,  shall  precede  co-opera- 
tion; but,  its  main  object  achieved,  it  will  not  be 

*  On  the  very  instructive  history  of  Swiss  Commercial  Policy 
see  Die  Schiveiz  und  die  Europiiische  Handelspolitik,  von  Dr. 
Peter  Heinrich  Schmidt  (Zurich,  1914). 

210 


THE  OUTLOOK 

blind  to  arguments  of  economic  convenience.  And 
it  is  in  this  spirit  that  the  wiser  heads  aniong  the 
new  nations  are  steadily  working;  Czecho-Slovakia 
in  particular,  has  been  entering  into  a  whole  network 
of  co-operative  arrangements  with  her  many 
neighbours,  whilst  the  recent  Conference  at  Porto 
Rosa  has  carried  the  same  principle  into  practical 
effect  in  numerous  important  directions  for  all  the 
Succession  States  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  Mon- 
archy including  Italy.  Here  rather  than  in  whole- 
sale schemes  for  tearing  up  the  Treaties  and  tidying 
up  the  map  of  Europe,  lies  the  direction  in  which 
good  Europeans  and  prudent  economic  thinkers 
alike  should  look  for  the  recuperation  of  the  long- 
suffering  continent. 

There  are  signs  that  this  is  at  last  being  realized; 
that  the  idealistic  advocates  of  the  revision  of  the 
territorial  clauses  of  the  Treaties  are  realizing  the 
practical  value  of  the  remedial  agencies  ready  to 
their  hand  on  the  minority  rights  clauses  of  the 
Treaties  and  in  the  growing  authority  of  the  League 
of  Nations,  while  the  economists  who,  three  years 
ago,  not  unnaturally  for  them,  could  descry  nothing 
but  the  immediate  disintegrating  effects  of  the 
redrawing  of  the  map  of  Europe,  are  realizing  the 
essential  stability  of  a  structure  based,  broadly 
speaking  and  with  undeniable  exceptions,  upon 
popular   consent,   and  are   ready  to   help  the  new 

211 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

governments  to  achieve  progress  upon  their  own 
Hnes. 

The  financial  and  commercial  difficulties  of  the 
continent,  and  their  reaction  upon  the  commerce 
of  the  whole  world,  are  now  evident  to  all.  They 
have  formed  the  subject  of  innumerable  books  and 
pamphlets,  the  schemes  and  conferences,  and  the 
advice  which  was  spurned  by  the  statesmen  in  191 9 
is  being  eagerly  sought  in  1922.  It  is  not  the  pur- 
pose of  these  pages  to  add  anything  to  the  technical 
side  of  these  discussions.  But  it  may  be  well  to 
conclude  this  chapter  by  drawing  attention  first  to 
the  spirit  to  which  all  such  remedial  measures  should 
be  put  forward,  and  then  to  the  reaction  upon 
opinion,  more  particularly  progressive  opinion,  of 
the  situation  already  outlined. 

The  central  difficulty  of  the  economic  situation  is 
the  problem  of  reparation.  That  problem  is,  at 
bottom,  not  an  economic  problem;  it  is  not  even  a 
political  problem;  it  is  a  moral  problem.  Germany 
has  done  France  and  Belgium  grievous  wrong  by 
waging  the  war  on  their  territory,  and  Britain  has 
done  France  grievous  wrong,  both  materially  and 
morally,  by  taking  the  lead  in  well-nigh  trebling 
the  German  indemnity,  and  by  insisting  on  her 
own  unjust  claims  at  the  expense  of  the  just  claim 
of  her  former  Ally.  This  situation  cannot  be  re- 
paired by  a  merely  commercial  arrangement.     All 

212 


THE  OUTLOOK 

three  parties  must  return  to  the  ground  of  justice 
and  mutual  confidence  which  is  the  only  basis  of  an 
enduring  understanding.  It  will  be  a  long  time 
before  France  can  feel  that  she  has  once  more  a 
thorough  renewal  of  confidence  in  Germany,  shat- 
tered as  this  was  so  rudely  in  191 4.  But  she  will 
be  ready  to  feel  confidence  once  more  in  Britain  and 
in  the  honourable  traditions  of  British  statesman- 
ship, when  a  British  Premier  has  once  and  for  all 
made  it  clear  to  his  own  countrymen  and  to  the 
world  that  Britain  took  the  lead  in  playing  a  dis- 
honourable part  in  1919.  and  that  she  waives  her 
claims  to  the  benefits  accruing  to  her  from  that 
policy,  not  as  an  act  of  generosity,  a  pretended  beau 
geste,  or  as  one  item  in  an  elaborate  bargain,  but 
as  an  act  of  justice.  It  is  not  easy  for  public  men 
to  admit  that  they  or  their  predecessors  have  been 
in  the  wrong.  But,  as  France  manifested  to  the 
world  in  the  Dreyfus  case,  there  is  great  healing 
value  in  a  frank  peccavi. 

What  of  progressive  opinion  in  the  post-war 
situation?  Its  main  task  is  to  adjust  itself  to  a 
wholly  new  state  of  affairs,  for  which  nineteenth 
century  schemes  and  ideologies  have  ill  prepared 
it.  It  must  accept — how  can  it  help  accepting? — 
the  present  capitalist  revival  as  inevitable.  Where 
Lenin  has  bowed  to  inexorable  fact  how  can  more 
moderate    reformers   continue    to   nurse    illusions? 

213 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

Socialism  and  the  tradition  of  revolution  and  of 
Messianic  expectation,  which  it  carried  with  it,  are 
dead  past  recall;  and  it  will  not  take  many  years 
before  its  organizations  have  either  disintegrated 
into  impossibilist  sects  or  broken  their  connections 
with  their  parent  doctrine.  Europe,  the  Disunited 
States  of  Europe,  is  entering  upon  a  stage  of  her 
economic  life  not  unlike  that  upon  which  the  United 
States  of  America  entered  after  its  own  Civil 
War;  and  in  this  period  of  reconstruction,  of  large 
concessions  to  capitalist  enterprise,  of  grandiose 
schemes  of  development,  lie  all  the  dangers  which, 
to  three  generations  of  Americans,  have  been 
summed  up  in  the  words  "Wall  Street."  Europe 
needs  her  Wall  Street  financiers,  but  she  needs  also, 
as  Americans  can  tell  her,  to  learn  how  to  control 
them.  If  they  are  the  guardians  of  prosperity, 
who  shall  protect  her  from  their  ambitions?  Quis 
custodiet  ipsos  ciustodcs? 

The  chief  negative  truth,  the  chief  task  in  the 
familiar  region  of  protest  and  "muck-raking" 
for  post-war  progressivism  in  Europe,  will  be  to 
preserve  political  democracy  from  domination  by 
capitalist  influence,  whether  native  or  foreign.  It 
will  be  to  maintain  liberty  unimpaired,  and  to 
extend  it  and  at  the  same  time  to  make  due  use  of 
the  agencies  indispensable  to  the  restoration  of 
European  life.     It  will  not  be  easy,  and  the  smaller 

214 


THE  OUTLOOK 

the  political  unit  the  weaker  and  more  inexperienced 
its  Government,  the  harder  it  will  be.     These  great 
corporations   so   perfectly   manned   with   the   great 
salaries   at   their   command,   with   constitutions   so 
skilfully  adopted,  like  the  machinery  in  their  mills, 
to  the  work  they  are  called  upon  to  do,  exercise  a 
power  in  the  modern  world  which  the  old-fashioned 
and  cumbersome  systems  of  democracy,  of  control 
by  the  plain  man,  find  it  hard  to  meet  on  equal 
terms.     In  the  course  of  the  last  few  generations 
private  power  has  steadily  improved  its  technique, 
whilst  the  organization  of  public  power,  if  it  has 
not  stood  still,   has   too   often  been   developed  by 
demagogues  and  caucus  politicians  for  other  than 
public    purposes.      Even    in    great    political    com- 
munities like  Great  Britain  and  France,  where  there 
is    a    long    tradition    of    political    experience    and 
responsible  public  opinion,  public  power  has  a  hard 
battle  to  fight,  as  all  w^ho  have  peeped  behind  the 
scenes   know   well,   against   private   power.      How 
much  more  difficult  is  the  struggle  likely  to  be  in 
small    scale   communities    like   the   new    republics, 
dependent,  as  they  must  be,  in  many  respects  upon 
outside  financial  aid,  and  even  in  large  scale  com- 
munities like  Germany,  where  the  mass  of  people 
has  still  to  learn  the  practice  of  political  democracy. 
Representative    Democracy,    no    longer    threatened 
from  without,  as  in  the  generation  preceding  1918, 

215 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

has  a  stern  struggle  to  wage  in  the  coming  genera- 
tion against  the  self-regarding  forces  within  each 
community  which,  as  Naumann  proposed  for 
Germany's  allies  in  191 5,  would  preserve  its  forms 
and  leave  its  substance  at  the  mercy  of  the  capitalist 
saviours  of  society. 

In  this  battle  for  democracy  progressives  will  find 
a  new  meeting  ground  and  new  watchwords.  Old 
style  socialists  and  old  style  liberals,  discarding  their 
respective  shibboleths  from  the  eighteen-forties,  will 
join  forces  in  a  new  movement  which,  going  back 
behind  Marx  and  Cobden  to  the  broader  and  more 
truly  prophetic  gospel  of  Mazzini,  will  unite  the 
social  and  national  streams  which  for  the  last  two 
generations  have  flowed  in  separate  channels.  They 
will  seek  in  the  field  of  politics  to  maintain  the 
tradition  of  responsible  self-government,  of  the 
personal  duty  of  active  citizenship  for  modern  men 
and  women  and  to  cleanse  its  institutions  from  the 
debasing  influences  which  have  led  men  to  seek  for 
remedies  in  old  and  new  systems  of  minority  rule; 
or,  to  put  the  problem  in  the  concrete,  they  will  have 
to  discover  means  by  which  the  mass  of  plain  men 
and  women,  can  be  induced  to  free  themselves  from 
boss  or  sectional  domination  by  paying  for  their 
politics  themselves;  for  party  finance  is  really  the 
key  to  the  rehabilitation  of  democracy.  And  they 
will    seek,    in   the    economic    sphere,    by    sustained 

216 


THE  OUTLOOK 

dispassionate,  realistic  experiment  in  every  field 
of  labour,  to  find  means  for  solving  the  industrial 
dilemma  of  the  modern  world — how  to  maintain 
a  good  life  for  the  producer  as  well  as  a  good  life 
for  the  consumer,  how  to  render  the  vast  apparatus 
of  modern  industrialism,  and  the  comforts  and 
conveniences  and,  as  we  think,  necessaries  which 
it  involves  for  our  lives  compatible  with  a  life  of 
dignity  and  self-respect,  of  inner  freedom  and  true 
happiness,  for  those  who,  whether  by  hand  or 
brain,  earn  their  livelihood  in  its  manifold  produc- 
tivities. 

These  are  the  political  tasks  for  forward  looking 
men  in  the  new  Europe.  But  greater  tasks  remain. 
Civilization  itself  remains  to  be  rescued  from  the 
slough  of  materialism  and  wealth  seeking  and  set 
upon  a  spiritual  basis.  We  need  a  new  sense  of 
unity  such  as  the  universities  and  churches  have 
failed  to  give  us,  both  in  our  minds  and  in  that 
deeper  region  of  which  the  language  of  reason  is 
but  the  over-simplified  and  often  too  jejune  expres- 
sion. We  need  a  revaluation  of  our  western  values 
and  a  new  sense  of  kinship  with  those  sections  of 
the  human  family  who  have  refused  to  bow  the 
knee  in  the  temple  of  material  progress.  We  need, 
if  not  a  new  religion — the  phrase  is  unduly  institu- 
tional— a  new  impetus  towards  the  unseen,  towards 
the  realm  where  moth  and  dust  do  not  corrupt  and 

217 


EUROPE  IN  CONVALESCENCE 

where  are  garnered  the  riches  which  no  grasping 
governments  can  tax  and  no  fluctuations  of  ex- 
change can  diminish. 

Who  shall  guide  us  into  that  country?  Those 
who  have  already  looked  across  the  river  at  its 
shining  distances.  There  are  in  the  Europe  of 
to-day  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  of  men  who 
have  lived  for  years  in  the  presence  of  Death  and 
who,  with  the  angel  ever  at  their  side,  with  friend 
after  friend  being  rapt  away,  with  their  own  life's 
account  neatly  totalled  and  ready  to  present  to 
the  Judge,  have  weighed  this  world's  values  in  the 
balances  and  discovered  their  true  measure.  These 
men  hold  the  destiny  of  Europe  in  their  hands, 
for  they  are  strong  enough  to  bear  it.  It  is  they, 
not  the  capitalists,  mere  possessors  of  dust  and 
dross,  who  can  save  Europe  if  they  will.  Yet  a  few 
years  and  the  generation  which  still  sits  enthroned 
in  the  seats  of  power,  a  generation  too  old  or  too 
cynical,  too  clever  or  too  callous,  to  have  been 
touched  by  the  living  fire  of  the  war  years,  or  of 
their  heroes,  will  have  passed  from  the  scene.  Those 
who  follow  them,  whether  in  Britain  or  in  France, 
in  Germany  or  in  Italy,  or  in  the  Slav  or  other 
lands  beyond,  will  have  a  double  gift  of  power  and 
knowledge — the  power  that  comes  from  the  energy 
and  determination  of  youth,  together  with  such 
knowledge  of  human  life  and  character  and  destiny 

218 


THE  OUTLOOK 

as  is  vouchsafed  to  most  only  at  life's  close,  too 
late  to  realize  it  in  action  and  in  purpose.  This 
generation  of  young  Europeans  knows;  and  know- 
ing, it  is  still  young  enough  to  act.  Death,  which 
has  decimated  its  ranks,  has  left  the  survivors 
stronger  than  before.  In  their  strength  and  in 
their  loneliness,  and  in  their  memory  of  sacred 
hours  and  friendships,  they  will  use  the  lives  that 
have  been  given  back  to  them  to  restore  life — true 
life — to  a  world  so  sadly  in  need  of  it.  Europe, 
the  mother  continent,  has  not  yet  run  her  race  or 
finished  her  achievement.  Scarred  and  suffering, 
destitute,  pauperized,  and  humiliated,  she  keeps 
both  her  pride  and  her  ideals,  and  deep  in  her  heart, 
too  deep  as  yet  for  utterance  in  a  language  that 
others  can  understand,  she  bears  the  promise  of  a 
future  which  will  cause  men  to  reverence  her,  even 
in  her  adversity,  not  merely  as  the  source  and 
origin  of  civilization,  but  as  its  pioneer. 


219 


APPENDICES 


221 


APPENDICES 

/. — Allied  Note  to  President  Wilson,  November  4, 
1918. 

'"T^HE   Allied   Governments   have   given   careful 
■*     consideration    to    the    correspondence    which 
has  passed   between   the   President  of   the  United 
States  and  the  German  Government. 

"Subject  to  the  qualifications  which  follow,  they 
declare  their  willingness  to  make  peace  with  the 
Government  of  Germany  on  the  terms  of  peace 
laid  down  in  the  President's  address  to  Congress  of 
January  8.  19 18,  and  the  principles  of  settlement 
enunciated  in  his  subsequent  addresses.  They 
must  point  out,  however,  that  Clause  2,  relating 
to  what  is  usually  described  as  the  freedom  of  the 
seas,  is  open  to  various  interpretations,  some  of 
which  they  could  not  accept.  They  must,  there- 
fore, reserve  to  themselves  complete  freedom  on 
this  subject  when  they  enter  the  Peace  Conference. 
"Further,  in  the  conditions  of  peace  laid  down 
in  his  address  to  Congress  of  January  8,  19 18,  the 

223 


APPENDICES 

President  declared  that  the  invaded  territories 
must  be  restored  as  well  as  evacuated  and  freed, 
and  the  Allied  Governments  feel  that  no  doubt 
ought  to  be  allowed  to  exist  as  to  what  this  pro- 
vision implies.  By  it  they  understand  that  com- 
pensation will  be  made  by  Germany  for  all  damage 
done  to  the  civilian  population  of  the  Allies,  and 
their  property  by  the  aggression  of  Germany  by 
land,  by  sea,  and  from  the  air." 

II. — Opening  paragraph  of  the  reply  of  the  Allied 
and  Associated  Powers  to  the  observations  of 
the  German  Delegation  on  the  Conditions  of 
Peace,  June,   1919. 

"The  Allied  and  Associated  Powers  are  in  com- 
plete accord  with  the  German  Delegation  in  their 
insistence  that  the  basis  for  the  negotiation  of  the 
treaty  of  peace  is  to  be  found  in  the  correspondence 
which  immediately  preceded  the  signing  of  the 
armistice  on  November  11,  191 8.  It  was  there 
agreed  that  the  treaty  of  peace  should  be  based 
upon  the  Fourteen  Points  of  President  Wilson's 
address  of  January  8,  1918,  as  they  were  modified 
by  the  Allies'  memorandum  included  in  the 
President's  note  of  November  5,  191 8,  and  upon 
the  principles  of  settlement  enunciated  by  President 
Wilson  in  his  later  addresses,  and  particularly  in 
his  address  of  September  27,  1918.     These  are  the 

224 


APPENDICES 

principles  upon  which  hostilities  were  abandoned 
in  November,  191 8;  these  are  the  principles  upon 
which  the  Allied  and  Associated  Powers  agreed  that 
peace  might  be  based;  these  are  the  principles 
which  have  guided  them  in  the  deliberations  which 
have  led  to  the  formulation  of  the  conditions  of 
peace." 

///. — Extract  from  a  speech  delivered  by  Mr.  J.  M. 
Keynes  on  October  13,  1921,  at  the  Inter- 
national Conference  on  Economic  Recovery  and 
World  Peace,  held  at  the  C  ax  ton  Hall, 
Westminster. 

"We  must  by  no  means  forget  that  the  bill  for 
devastation  only  comprehends  about  one-third  of 
the  whole.  Nearly  two-thirds  of  our  demand  is 
for  pensions  and  allowances.  The  inclusion  of 
pensions  and  allowances  in  our  claim  has  very 
nearly  trebled  the  demand  which  we  are  making 
upon  Germany.  I  have  given  reasons  in  the  past 
for  thinking  that  the  inclusion  of  these  claims 
was  contrary  to  our  engagements,  and  I  do  not 
admit  that  I  have  been  refuted.  I  still  think  that 
the  inclusion  of  those  claims  was  contrary  to  our 
engagements,  and  that,  even  late  in  the  day,  it  is 
our  duty  to  abandon  them. 

"Apart  from  questions  of  international  right,  the 
addition  of  pensions  (according  to  the  views  of 
IS  225 


APPENDICES 

those  Americans  who  took  part  at  Paris)  was  largely 
at  the  instigation  of  this  country,  in  order  to  inflate 
the  proportion  of  the  claims  due  to  us.  If  we 
Hmited  ourselves  to  devastation,  it  was  understood 
that  the  share  of  the  British  Empire  would  be 
comparatively  small  compared  with  the  share  of 
France.  The  object  of  including  pensions  was  to 
raise  the  proportion  which  we  could  claim,  and  so 
aid  the  justification  of  election  promises.  American 
commentators  upon  this,  who  were  delegates  at 
the  Peace  Conference,  were  greatly  surprised  at 
the  French  ever  agreeing  to  it.  I  lay  emphasis 
on  this  because,  as  it  was  chiefly  in  the  interests  of 
Great  Britain  that  these  claims  are  there,  it  is  a 
matter  about  which  we  ourselves  can  properly 
initiate  amendments.  If  the  claim  for  pensions 
and  allowances  were  to  be  abolished,  that  must 
necessarily  increase  greatly  the  proportion  accruing 
to  France,  which,  in  my  opinion,  is  a  thing  right  and 
proper,  and  one  which  we  can  justly  propose.  I 
repeat,  therefore,  that  the  claim  for  pensions  and 
allowances  ought  to  be  dropped,  for  reasons  of 
legality,  for  reasons  of  good  sense  having  regard  to 
the  total  magnitude  of  the  demands,  and  also  in 
view  of  the  relative  claims  of  France  and  ourselves 
on  the  available  funds.  I  urge  this  on  your  atten- 
tion. If  we  drop  the  claims  for  pensions  and 
allowances,   and   if   we   consider   coolly   what   the 

226 


APPENDICES 

devastated   area    will    really    cost    to    make    good, 
Germany  can  pay  it." 

IV. — Extract  from  article  by  Mr.  T.  W.  Lamont, 
Economic  Adviser  to  the  American  Peace  Com- 
mission, printed  in  "What  Really  Happened  at 
Paris,"  London,  H odder  and  Stoughton,  192 1. 

The  Inclusion  of  Pensions. 

"The  American  delegation  as  a  whole,  while 
deeply  sympathetic  sentimentally,  with  the  idea  that 
pensions  should  be  included  as  damage  to  the 
civilian  population,  found  it  difficult  to  reconcile 
this  contention  with  actual  principle,  feeling  that 
pensions  fell  more  properly  into  the  category  of 
military  costs  of  war.  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  however, 
advocated  with  great  vigour  and  ingenuity  the  in- 
clusion of  pensions  under  the  head  of  damage  to  the 
civilian  population.  Said  he :  'You  mean  to  say 
that  France  is  to  be  compensated  for  the  loss  of  a 
chimney  pot  in  the  devastated  district,  but  not  for 
the  loss  of  a  life?  Do  you  set  more  value  upon  a 
chimney  than  you  do  upon  a  soldier's  life?'  This 
argument  was  appealing,  but  not  necessarily  sound. 

"However,  it  was  General  Jan  Smuts  who  finally 
prepared  the  argument  which  convinced  President 
Wilson  that  pensions  and  separation  allowances 
should  be  included  in  the  reparation  bill.  ...  I 
well  remember  the  day  upon  which  President  Wilson 

227 


APPENDICES 

determined  to  support  the  inclusion  of  pensions 
in  the  reparation  bill.  Some  of  us  were  gathered 
in  his  library  in  the  Place  des  Etats-Unis,  having 
been  summoned  by  him  to  discuss  this  particular 
question  of  pensions.  We  explained  to  him  that 
we  could  not  find  a  single  lawyer  in  the  American 
delegation  that  would  give  an  opinion  in  favour  of 
including  pensions.  All  the  logic  was  against  it. 
'Logic!  Logic!'  exclaimed  the  President,  'I  don't 
give  a  damn  for  logic.  I  am  going  to  include 
pensions  I'  " 

V. — Memorandum  by  General  Smuts  which  won 
over  President  Wilson's  assent  to  the  Pensions 
and  Separations  Allozvances  Clauses  to  the 
Treaty  of  Versailles  (Article  244,  Annex  i, 
Clauses  5  and  7),  published  in  "TJie  Making 
of  the  Reparation  and  Economic  Sections  of 
the  Treaty,"  by  Bernard  M.  Baruch;  Harper's, 
New  York,  1920,  p.  29. 

Note  on  Reparation. 
"The  extent  to  which  reparation  can  be  claimed 
from  Germany  depends  in  the  main  on  the  meaning 
of  the  last  reservation  made  by  the  Allies  in  their 
note  to  President  Wilson,  November,  1918.  That 
reservation  was  agreed  to  by  President  Wilson  and 
accepted  by  the  German  Government  in  the  armis- 
tice negotiations  and  was  in  the   following  terms: 

228 


APPENDICES 

'Further,  in  the  conditions  of  peace  laid  down 
in  his  address  to  Congress  on  January  8,  1918, 
the  President  declared  that  invaded  territories 
must  be  restored  as  well  as  evacuated  and  made 
free.  The  Allied  Governments  feel  that  no  doubt 
ought  to  be  allowed  to  exist  as  to  what  this 
provision  implies.  By  it  they  understand  that 
compensation  will  be  made  by  Germany  for  all 
damage  done  to  the  civilian  population  of  the 
Allies  and  to  their  property  by  the  aggression  of 
Germany  by  land,  by  sea,  and  from  the  air.' 

"In  this  reservation  a  careful  distinction  must 
be  made  between  the  quotation  from  the  President, 
which  refers  to  the  evacuation  and  restoration  of 
the  invaded  territories,  and  the  implication  which 
the  Allies  find  in  that  quotation  and  which  they 
proceed  to  enunciate  as  a  principle  of  general 
applicability.  The  Allies  found  in  the  President's 
provision  for  restoration  of  the  invaded  territories 
a  general  principle  implied  of  far-reaching  scope. 
This  principle  is  that  of  compensation  for  all  damage 
to  the  civilian  population  of  the  Allies  in  their 
persons  or  property,  which  resulted  from  the  Ger- 
man aggression,  and  whether  done  on  land  or  sea  or 
from  the  air.  By  accepting  this  comprehensive 
principle  (as  the  German  Government  did)  they 
acknowledged   their   liability    to    compensation    for 

229 


APPENDICES 

all  damage  to  the  civilian  population  or  their 
property  wherever  and  however  arising,  so  long  as 
it  was  the  result  of  German  aggression.  The  Presi- 
dent's limitation  to  restoration  of  the  invaded 
territories  only  of  some  of  the  allies  was  clearly 
abandoned. 

"The  next  question  is  how  to  understand  the 
phrase  'civilian  population'  in  the  above  reservation, 
and  it  can  be  most  conveniently  answered  by  an 
illustration.  A  shopkeeper  in  a  village  in  northern 
France  lost  his  shop  through  enemy  bombardment 
and  was  himself  badly  wounded.  He  would  be 
entitled  as  one  of  the  civilian  population  to  com- 
pensation for  the  loss  of  his  property  and  for  his 
personal  disablement.  He  subsequently  recovered 
completely,  was  called  up  for  military  service,  and 
after  being  badly  wounded  and  spending  some  time 
in  the  hospitals,  was  discharged  as  permanently 
unfit.  The  expense  he  was  to  the  French  Govern- 
ment during  this  period  as  a  soldier  (his  pay  and 
maintenance,  his  uniform,  rifle,  ammunition,  his 
keep  in  the  hospital,  etc.)  was  not  damage  to  a 
civilian,  but  military  loss  to  his  Government,  and 
it  is  therefore  arguable  that  the  French  Government 
cannot  recover  compensation  for  such  expense  under 
the  above  reservation.  His  wife,  however,  was 
during  this  period  deprived  of  her  bread-winner, 
and  she  therefore  suffered  damage  as  a  member  of 

230 


APPENDICES 

the  civilian  population,  for  which  she  would  be 
entitled  to  compensation.  In  other  words,  the 
separation  allowances  paid  to  her  and  her  children 
during  this  period  by  the  French  Government  would 
have  to  be  made  good  by  the  German  Government, 
as  the  compensation  which  the  allowances  represent 
was  their  liability.  After  the  soldier's  discharge  as 
unfit,  he  rejoins  the  civilian  population,  and  as 
for  the  future  he  cannot  (in  whole  or  in  part)  earn 
his  own  livelihood,  he  is  suffering  damage  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  civilian  population,  for  which  the  German 
Government  are  again  liable  to  make  compensation. 
In  other  words  the  pension  for  disablement  which 
he  draws  from  the  French  Government  is  really  a 
liability  of  the  German  Government  which  they  must 
under  the  above  reservation  make  good  to  the 
French  Government.  It  could  not  be  argued  that 
as  he  was  disabled  while  a  soldier  he  does  not  suffer 
damage  as  a  civilian  after  his  discharge  if  he  is  unfit 
to  do  his  ordinary  work.  He  does  literally  suffer 
as  a  civilian  after  his  discharge,  and  his  pension  is 
intended  to  make  good  the  damage,  and  is  therefore 
a  liability  of  the  German  Government.  If  he  had 
been  killed  in  active  service,  his  wife  as  a  civilian 
would  have  been  totally  deprived  of  her  bread-win- 
ner and  would  be  entitled  to  compensation  In  other 
words,  the  pension  she  would  draw  from  the  French 
Government  would  really  be  a  liability  of  the  Ger- 

231 


APPENDICES 

man  Government  under  the  above  reservation,  and 
would  have  to  be  made  good  by  them  to  the  French 
Government. 

"The  plain,  common  sense  construction  of  the 
reservation  therefore  leads  to  the  conclusion  that, 
while  direct  war  expenditure  (such  as  the  pay  and 
equipment  of  soldiers,  the  cost  of  rifles,  guns,  and 
ordnance  and  all  similar  expenditures)  could  per- 
haps not  be  recovered  from  the  Germans,  yet 
disablement  pensions  to  discharged  soldiers,  or 
pensions  to  widows  and  orphans,  or  separation 
allowances  paid  to  their  wives  and  children  during 
the  period  of  their  military  service  all  are  items 
representing  compensation  to  members  of  the 
civilian  population  for  damage  sustained  by  them 
for  which  the  German  Government  are  liable.  What 
was  spent  by  the  Allied  Governments  on  the  soldier 
himself,  or  on  the  mechanical  appliances  of  war, 
might  perhaps  not  be  recoverable  from  the  German 
Government  under  the  reservation,  as  not  being  in 
any  plain  and  direct  sense  damage  to  the  civilian 
population.  But  what  was,  or  is,  spent  on  the 
citizen  before  he  became  a  soldier  or  after  he  has 
ceased  to  be  a  soldier,  or  at  any  time  on  his  family, 
represents  compensation  for  damage  done  to 
civilians  and  must  be  made  good  by  the  German 
Government  under  any  fair  interpretation  of  the 
above  reservation.     This  includes  all  war  pensions 

232 


APPENDICES 

and  separation  allowances,  which  the  German 
Government  are  liable  to  make  good,  in  addition 
to  reparation  or  compensation  for  all  damage  done 
to  property  of  the  Allied  peoples. 

(Signed)     J.  C.  Smuts." 
Paris,  March  31,  191 9. 

VI . — Extract  from  Statement  and  Analysis  by  Mr. 
Herbert  Hoover  on  "The  Economic  Situation 
in  Europe,"  dated  Jidy  3,  191 9,  published  in 
the  National  Food  Journal,  issued  by  the 
British  Ministry  of  Food,  on  August  13,  1919. 

"The  economic  difficulties  of  Europe  as  a  whole 
at  the  signature  of  peace  may  be  almost  summarized 
in  the  phrase  'demoralized  productivity.'  The 
production  of  necessities  for  this  450,000,000 
population  (including  Russia)  has  never  been  at 
so  low  an  ebb  as  at  this  day. 

"A  summary  of  the  unemployment  bureaux  in 
Europe  will  show  that  15,000,000  families  are  re- 
ceiving unemployment  allowances  in  one  form  or 
another,  and  are,  in  the  main,  being  paid  by  con- 
stant inflation  of  currency.  A  rough  estimate  would 
indicate  that  the  population  of  Europe  is  at  least 
100,000,000  greater  than  can  be  supported  without 
imports,  and  must  live  by  the  production  and 
distribution  of  exports.  .  .  .  From  all  causes, 
accumulated    to    different     intensity    in     different 

233 


APPENDICES 

localities,  there  is  the  essential  fact  that,  unless 
productivity  can  be  rapidly  increased,  there  can  be 
nothing  but  political,  moral,  and  economic  chaos, 
finally  interpreting  itself  in  loss  of  life  on  a  scale 
hitherto  undreamed  of." 

VII. — Extract  from  Paper  read  by  Mr.  A.  E. 
Zimmern  to  a  National  Conference  of  British 
Working-class  Associations  at  Birmingham  on 
September  22,   igiy. 

"But  the  most  urgent  economic  task  which  the 
settlement  will  impose  will  not  be  domestic,  but 
international;  it  will  be  concerned,  as  we  have 
already  suggested,  with  the  securing  of  supplies 
upon  which  the  recuperation  of  the  peoples,  and,  more 
especially,  of  the  industrial  peoples,  depends.  How 
can  this  problem  best  be  dealt  with?  It  is  worth 
while  trying  to  answer  this  question,  for  upon  its 
successful  solution  in  the  months  following  the 
signing  of  peace  the  international  'atmosphere'  of 
the  post-war  period  will  very  largely  depend. 

"Private  capitalism  as  we  have  seen,  must  prove 
unequal  to  the  task.  Nor  will  'industrial  self- 
government'  help  us,  for  we  are  dealing  with  what 
is  essentially  a  problem  of  foreign  trade  and  foreign 
policy.  The  responsibility  for  supplying  the  needs 
of  their  exhausted  populations  must,  in  one  form 
or  another,  be  borne  by  the  various  governments. 

234 


APPENDICES 

"What  form  should  this  action  take?  The 
natural  course  might  seem  to  be  for  the  various 
governments  concerned  to  deal  with  the  matter 
themselves;  and  in  point  of  fact,  enough  is  known 
for  the  conjecture  to  be  hazarded  that  every  govern- 
ment in  Europe,  belligerents  and  neutrals  alike, 
is  already  setting  on  foot  an  official  organization  to 
deal  with  the  problem  of  post-war  supplies.  Self- 
preservation  alone  demands  it.  No  belligerent 
Government  dare  demobilize  its  armies  till  it  can 
provide  employment  for  its  workers,  and  employ- 
ment depends  in  its  turn  upon  industrial  raw 
material,  and  raw  material  upon  shipping.  There 
is  therefore  urgent  need  for  all  the  Governments 
to  organize  what  resources  they  can  lay  their  hands 
on  with  at  least  the  same  thoroughness  as  they 
have  devoted  to  the  business  of  mobilization  or 
making  war.  In  spite  of  the  perilous  uncertainty 
of  many  of  the  factors  involved,  dependent  as  they 
are  on  the  terms  of  peace,  Government  'Reconstruc- 
tion Departments'  are  probably  everywhere  at 
work  on  the  twin  problems  of  demobilization  and 
supplies.  .  .  . 

"The  war  will  have  been  fought  in  vain  if  it 
finds  the  various  governments  in  their  mutual 
business  relations,  actuated  by  the  same  grasping 
and  anti-social  spirit  as  too  often  characterized 
their  pre-war  commercial  activities.     If  the  problem 

235 


APPENDICES 

is  left  to  be  solved  on  competitive  lines,  with  the 
Governments  outbidding  one  another,  there  will  be 
a  scrambling  and  pushing,  and  threatening  and 
bullying  such  as  the  world  has  never  seen  before, 
and  the  League  of  Nations  will  perish  in  its  cradle 
amid  the  wrangles  of  the  rival  disputants.  The 
problem  is  one  that  can  only  be  handled  success- 
fully on  co-operative  lines,  both  in  the  interests  of 
the  world  as  a  whole  and  of  the  populations 
concerned.  And  once  it  is  realized  that  co-operation 
between  the  various  governments  is  the  only  policy 
compatible  with  a  tolerable  state  of  international 
relations  after  the  war,  it  will  not  take  long  to  draw 
the  further  conclusion  that  the  wisest  course  would 
be  to  set  the  whole  matter  on  an  international  basis ; 
in  other  words,  for  the  various  governments  to 
delegate  powers  to  purchase,  allocate,  and  convey 
supplies  on  their  behalf  to  an  international  com- 
mission. Such  a  commission  would  then,  in  effect, 
become  a  Relief  Commission  for  the  world  as  a 
whole,  similar  to  the  Commission  which  looked 
after  the  needs  of  Belgium  under  American  guidance 
during  the  earlier  period  of  the  war. 

"If  the  machinery  had  to  be  created  de  novo 
within  a  few  weeks  or  months,  its  world-wide  scope 
might  well  prove  beyond  the  powers  of  human 
organization.  But  in  fact  the  machinery  is  already 
there  ready  to  hand;  it  exists  in  the  shape  of  the 

236 


APPENDICES 

blockade,  and  the  Inter-Ally  economic  control 
which  has  been  established  in  connection  with  it. 
The  blockade  which  was  first  established  to  keep 
goods  out  of  Central  Europe,  slowly  developed 
through  the  pressure  of  events,  into  an  organization 
for  allocating  shipping  and  supplies  to  the  different 
countries  and  services.  The  rationing  of  imports 
will  not  need  to  begin  after  the  war.  The  Allies 
and  neutrals  are  already  living  under  a  regime  of 
rationing.  All  that  will  be  required  will  be  to  adjust 
the  form  and  scope  of  the  organization  to  meet  the 
needs  of  the  post-war  situation." 


237 


The  Startling  Book   Which  Has   Caused  a 
World' Wide  Sensation 

At  the 
Supreme  War  Council 

Lloyd  George  says:  **This  is  the  best  thing  that  has 
yet  been  written  about  the  war." 

Observer:  "Captain  Wright  challenges  contradic- 
tion, persecution,  and  even  prosecution.  .  .  .  It  is 
probably  the  shortest  of  all  war-books.  None  stands 
out  with  more  import  and  decision.  *' 

Birmingham  Post:  *' A  book  which  every  man  and 
woman  in  this  country  should  read.  One  is  not 
sure  that  this  is  not  the  most  vital  book  which  has 
been  written  about  the  men  who  conducted  the  war." 

Saturday  Review:  *'We  have  had  many  apologies 
for,  and  as  many  attacks  on,  the  conduct  of  the  war, 
but  none  so  far-reaching  as  this. " 

Outlook:  "Captain  Wright  by  this  book  has  en- 
tered the  halls  of  the  immortals.  He  has  brought  to 
light  truths  that  will  destroy  great  reputations,  and  right 
mighty  wrongs.  ** 

G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


THE  DEVELOPMENT 

OF 

EUROPEAN  NATIONS 

BY 

J.  HOLLAND  ROSE,  Li(t.D. 

Aothor  ol  "The  Personality  of  Napoleon," 

"The  Revolutionary  and  Napoleonic 

Era.  1789-1815,"  etc. 

8°,      One  volume.      Maps 

A  discussion  by  a  scholar  of  authority  of 
those  events  which  had  a  distinct  formative 
influence  upon  the  development  of  European 
States  during  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  a  period  remarkable  because  of  the 
great  progress  made  by  the  people  of  Europe 
in  their  efforts  to  secure  a  larger  measure  of 
political  freedom  for  the  individual,  and  the 
legitimate  development  of  the  nation. 

This  is  a  sixth  edition  of  this  famous  work, 
with  two  additional  chapters  by  William  L. 
McPherson,  author  of  "A  Short  History  of  the 
Great  War"  and  "The  Strategy  of  the  Great 
War,"  bringing  it  down  to  date.  Two  volumes 
in  one. 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

New  York  London 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


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